Thu, 07 May 2026 07:46:58 -0400WeeblySat, 20 Sep 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e10-the-sins-of-the-father> Friday, 3rd December 2038 <

“My father was addicted to gambling when I was younger” Andrew confesses, occupying his couch in the middle of an empty living room and staring at the wooden floorboards. “It didn’t matter what it was, if there was a way to throw money on a quick bet, he’d take it without a second to think” the man remarks, his face flushed with the dim light from a nearby lamp, “there were some days where he’d tell me to skip school and come with him to the racetracks ‘cause I was ‘good luck’ when I was a boy.”

Resting his right forearm over his thigh whilst his left hand scratches at the back of his neck, the man sits in a quiet room with no one to share the space with, his focus only being on the object that stands across from him. “Of course, though... what’s a problem gambler without some kinda debt to owe, right?” Andrew persists, speaking in a low enough tone for it to appear personal and intimate.

“I’ve said for years now that my parents were never proud of me. I’ve told people that I was always a disappointment to them, but that’s not really the whole truth” the man admits, staring forward with a gentle shake of his head, “they despised me.” Licking his bottom lip, the man’s eyes wander off toward the windows on the opposite side of the room, staring at the dark and cold night sky that lingers over the head of the quiet neighbourhood with a passing glance.

“Mom had her own vices, but her demons were mostly devoted to figuring out how quickly she could empty a bottle of vodka in one sitting” the devoted father continues to recall, visibly lacking any favour toward the woman. “I bring this up to show why they thought so little of me. Dad was losing money fast and mom couldn’t find enough loose change in the couch cushions to hit the package store in good faith” Andrew continues, another shake of his head offered, “I was a waste of good money.”

With a little, red light blinking just above its lens, the camera that his eldest daughter had unintentionally passed down to his youngest now finds itself recording the man responsible for bringing both of them into the world, voluntarily set up in the centre of the commons area.

“I stayed a waste of that money until I left the house and got a job. It was a decent gig for minimum wage- nothing too special” Andrew proceeds, his free hand scratching at the hairs that make up his beard. “It was enough to move out and get my own place for a few months- maybe a year or so- after I turned eighteen. It was a nice little starter apartment for a few hundred bucks a month” the words continue to be spoken, caught on tape to be preserved as intended.

“I’d been working for almost two years by that point, but whatever money I couldn’t hide from my parents would end up on some casino table or in some Pakistani guy’s Gandhi-mart a few blocks off from the trailer we lived in” the man continues to evoke the memories of, sometimes allowing his eyes to drift off into the distance in an effort of recollecting specific details.

“Moving out was the only way to guarantee they wouldn’t keep lifting cash off me. I scheduled an apartment tour and took the first one that was available the day I became a legal adult” he proceeds, nodding along with the returning flood of details that reach his mind. “I believe it was two months after I moved out that I started dating Morgan” Andrew begins, reaching the line of thought that finds him in front of the camera now.

“You know how it is when you’re in your late teens, right? I hate to be as vulgar as to say this, but- pussy is pussy. That’s the mantra of just about every man I’ve ever met” he laughs, amused at the crude and immature outlook he’d once carried, “anyway, we started dating for a while. Eventually, she moved in and not long after that-” Andrew carries on, pausing for a moment as he prepares to speak what he’s gone years now without saying, “-after that, we found out she was pregnant with Sophie.”

Bowing his head again, Andrew’s face falls as he steadies his breath, feeling a pit grow in his stomach with a feeling similar to how an apple rotting from within appears from the outside. “Anyway, it wasn’t long before we couldn’t afford the apartment anymore. With all the food and the diapers and the formula we needed ‘cause I was scared to death that Morgan kept smoking while she was carrying- it added up” he rolls on, face taking back toward the camera’s lens.

“She didn’t have any family she kept in touch with, and I figured that- with a bank account to keep my money in and agreeing to help them pay some bills...” Andrew again comes to a pause, frowning at the displeasure over even thinking back upon the situation at hand, “...it’d be better to move back in with my parents than to force my new family out onto the street.”

Clearing his throat, the distressed father is again forced to hang his head, wearing the same hoodie that he’d been sporting all night long. “Not long after Sophie was born, Morgan was admitted into in-patient treatment for a whole bunch of psychological problems. I figured it wasn’t safe to leave so many things at the mercy of her to make while she was in that state of mind” Andrew confesses, “one of those things was a life insurance policy I’d named her the beneficiary of.”

Directing visual bitterness toward himself for the choices that he’d made long ago, the secret-carrying father lets his mind settle with the upsetting circumstances that plague his mind. “The only reason for the change was to make sure Morgan didn’t have to be bothered with any of that nonsense while she was in treatment. I didn’t foresee us splitting up like we did” Andrew explains, defending his reasoning at the time, “the only people I could transfer those things to were my parents.”

Leaning back in the soft supports of his sofa, the father stares off into the distance again as he continues to speak. “Around this time, I’d started becoming friendly with a woman named Daria Comiski. She’d just started at the restaurant I’d been working at and we got along pretty quickly” Andrew explains, nodding to himself at the memories, “I don’t want to take too long, so I’ll just cut out the troubles I had with Morgan in the years that followed. Daria and I were very close.”

Stationary and uncontrolled, the camera simply remains put in the centre of the room bearing witness to the man’s confessions, serving its duties diligently as the only watching eye. “At this time, the stress got to be a lot. The fact that my parents kept asking for money to feed into their vices certainly didn’t help” Andrew explains, “had I been home to answer a phone call one day, the agent I’d been in contact with would’ve never told them to let me know I was approved for a new apartment.”

Going cold, the father’s expression loses its look of intrigue as his mind races toward less pleasant and much darker recollections still yet to be uttered from his lips. “Fast forward to a few days later when my dad asked me to help him with this hunt he was insistent on doing” Andrew explains, a deeper squint carried in his eyelids, “for context, the trailer lived near a big plot of woodland. Sometimes- because it’s rural Missouri- people will head out of town to hunt out of season.”

Shaking his head with a frown, the father confesses that such an out-of-nowhere dedication to taking toward the forest never quite sat well with him- even at the time. “My father wasn’t a hunter. He said he was offered a lot of money to take a chance and hunt for some deer for a local shop, and the idea that he’d pick up a rifle and try to hunt for a few bucks was the only part that made sense” he concedes, disheartened for even seeing sense in that.

“What I didn’t understand was why I needed to go” Andrew doubles down, eyes again taking toward the reflective lens that the recording camera holds toward him before venturing back toward the home’s larger interior, “for days leading up to it, my father would really oddly tell me how much he was looking forward to teaching me how to hunt- as if he knew how to hunt or as if I was a seven year old he was finally showing how to be a man.”

For a moment, the father gathers a massive breath into his lungs, filling the organs with as much oxygen as they can hold before letting them go at the glance of a clock mounted on the wall his eyes take to. “Shit... it’s getting late” Andrew mutters aloud, clearing his throat whilst looking down to the floor once more, shaking his head as if he were trying to physically clear his mind of the thoughts that fill it before looking back toward the lens, “we’ll continue this tomorrow.”

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

> Saturday, 4th December 2038 <

“Going somewhere?” Andrew wonders aloud with genuine curiosity as he steps through the divider that stands between the kitchen and living room. “Yes, there are a bunch of lights on the van’s dashboard-thing that don’t usually light up” Elaine replies, dressed in a light brown coat with her hair tied up in a bun, descending the stairs with her purse in hand, “the dealership I bought it from referred be to this mechanic about eight miles north and the only time he had available was this morning.”

“Are you gonna need a ride back?” the woman’s husband questions aloud, bending toward the ground just beside the staircase’s bannister to pick up a package of water bottles he’s intent on stuffing into the refrigerator. “I’ll let you know. They said things like these usually don’t look serious enough for a mechanic to drop everything they’re doing and work on it there” Elaine responds, shrugging her shoulders as she reaches ground level, “I’m pretty sure they’ll let me drive it back.”

“Well just call me if you need a pick up” Andrew responds, stepping forward and pressing his lips onto those of his dearly beloved, “I love you.”

“I love you too” Elaine says with a pleasant smile, turning back around with ease and making for the front door whose closure on her way through allows for the guise she wears to fall. More nervous than anything else, the devoted wife and mother stares at her van with great uncertainty, her face wretched by the anxiety that comes over her in the face of what her true reasons for the day trip are.

“Hey, Liv!? Are you awake!?” Andrew calls out from the bottom of the stairs, waiting for a few seconds before his ears catch a tired groan. ‘I am now” the teenager shouts back with as much energy as she can muster, the retort bringing a smile over her father’s face as he returns to the kitchen. “The scene was described by detectives as inhumanly grizzly and horrifyingly morbid” a news anchor remarks through the television in the room’s corner, catching the package-carrying man’s eyes.

“Police say Wolf was arrested late last night in connection to the murders of his ex wife and daughter, and that charges have been formally brought forward” the blonde woman confidently remarks to the scene of a home that appears familiar to the father’s eye, its front lawn surrounded by cars with flashing red and blue lights.

Taking no emotion in the news story as the anchor begins to shift her focus to other stories, Andrew carries the heavy package the rest of the way toward the fridge, yanking open the door before beginning to stuff the plastic water bottles inside one at a time. Just overhead, a set of footsteps march along the wooden floorboards above and eventually make their way out from the room they’d inhabited, gradually making their way down the front staircase and onto the main floor.

“It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday morning” Liv casually remarks as she draws closer to the kitchen, rubbing her eyes as they refuse to fully open once struck with the sunlight that bathes the room she now enters, “why’d you have to wake me up so early?” Lifting his right eyebrow, Andrew passes the young girl a look with humour taken from her question, paying no mind to the short shorts and sleeve-cut band t-shirt that had been passed down by her older sister.

“Because, like you said...” Andrew responds, smirking at the girl as he jokes at her expense, “...it’s ten o’clock in the morning.” Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Liv walks up to her knelt father before crouching toward the ground, giving him a peck on the cheek before reaching past him and toward the paper carton of orange juice that sits on a shelf a few feet away.

“Love you too, honey” he concedes, nodding toward his daughter as she walks off with the carton and allows him to continue his efforts of restocking the fridge with cold water. “Where’s mom?” Liv wonders aloud, noticing the lack of her brother’s presence in one of the chairs that’s been stored off in the corner of the room and the emptiness of the stovetop that the woman would most frequently cook at.

“She put your brother down for a nap a few minutes ago and just left to take the van into the shop” Andrew replies, briefly putting a halt to his current chore as his eyes take back toward the teenager, “use a cup, honey.” Having placed her lips to the slot of her beverage’s container, Liv finishes her brief sip straight from the carton before lowering it back to the room’s island.

Doing as instructed, the recently awakened teenager approaches the dishwasher whilst her father continues to empty the package of its bottles, another curiosity dawning upon her mind as she begins pouring the juice. “What’s for breakfast?” Liv wonders aloud, soon folding the container’s paper tab back inward and leaning over the fridge’s open door to return it for the shelf it’d been stationed atop.

“Well, when your brother wakes up and you put on pants that don’t make me worry that your vagina will be falling out every time you sit down- I figured we’d all go out for breakfast” Andrew responds, standing up from the ground as he crumbles up the now-empty plastic bag and tosses it into the garbage.

“Why? Did you forget how to cook?” Liv inquires, not understanding why the food-stocked fridge would be allowed to go without visitation in favour of dining in elsewhere. “No, I just figured it’d be nice to do something with my family on a Saturday morning” Andrew replies, leaning his back against the kitchen’s counter as he crosses his arms, “I’m still trying to get used to thinking of you as just another teenager. It’s not easy to just change the way you see someone after such a long time.”

Lifting the glass cup she’d poured her drink into toward her lips, Liv nods to the man mid-sip before turning away, gesturing her acceptance of the gesture as she walks off with the drink in tow. Taking the answer for what it’s worth, Andrew smiles to himself and watches her walk away, rounding the bannister and heading back for her room whilst her father stares on with pride, pleased to see the woman that she’s become rather than dwelling on the way he’d spent the night prior.

|

“No, the guy says he can fix it today but that I’ll have to wait a few hours before I can get it back on the road” Elaine replies, covering one side of her head with one free hand whilst speaking into the flat, pink case-wearing cellphone that she holds in the other, “he doesn’t know if there are things he’ll need to do in order to fix it that I’ll have to sign off on, so I’m supposed to be here until the thing’s ready.”

Allowing the man to respond, Elaine quietly shakes her head in refusal at what he speaks before voicing it aloud, wanting to allow him the opportunity to talk before doing so. “No, no! Go without me! Mom’s not going to feel left out just because you go out to get pancakes and waffles” she replies, wearing a pleased smile as she speaks, “let the kids spend some quality time with their father for crying out loud! Just have a good time together!”

Conceding defeat to his wife’s point, Andrew caves to her request and begins the process of ending the call, sharing their departing quips to each other before both parties put their phones away, attending to the matters that they have on hand. On her end of the line, Elaine pulls her phone away from her face and smiles at the screen, allowed a few seconds to see her wallpaper of a family photo before it turns off, allowing the woman to see her own reflection in the dark screen.

With a look of guilt, the woman tucks her phone away and into her purse before grasping its handles tightly, sitting with her own thoughts for a few seconds before reaching forward, pressing her thumb into the chrome button on the front of a box. Within moments, Elaine is met with the sound of a loud buzzing that preempts the unlocking of a large, heavy door she soon enters through, leaving behind the crisp, middle-America winter air in favour of a warm, narrow corridor.

“Right this way, ma’am” a woman in a dark uniform gestures, stepping off to the side of a doorway to allow the now empty-handed woman entry into a large, communal space littered with circular tables. “You’ve got a visitor, kid” a heavy-set black woman calls out, her voice bouncing off the far-apart walls that make up the room she and the subject of her claim occupy, its interior lit with harsh, fluorescent light tubes that buzz loud enough to notice without fail.

Picking her head up from its place within the crossed arms that she rests atop one of the tables in the centre of the room, a young woman in a dull, colourless jumpsuit turns back to face her guest, eyes widening slightly as she tries to conceal a smile. Feeling the moisture leave her mouth, Elaine stares toward the girl that’s spent the last near-hour awaiting her arrival, unable to put into words what kind of emotions she’s feeling.

“You showed up” Sophie quips, her hair coloured a light brown and face lightened slightly with a smile.

|

Closing the door to his daughter’s room, Andrew quietly embarks upon a descent of the home’s central staircase en route to the living room, his upper body covered in a plain, black t-shirt and lower body wearing the faded, blue jeans he’d been wearing all day long. With ease and as if part of his routine, the father breaks the camera out from the place in which he’d hidden it away and sets it up on the home’s back patio, wanting to keep his voice as far away from ears to reach.

“I’d come up with a cold on the morning of that hunt my dad was talking about. As far as I knew, the only people that were supposed to go out were me and him” Andrew explains, bracing against the noticeable winds that thrust frosty air in whatever direction mother nature dictates. “I’d never intended to go, but now I had a sore throat and an appointment with the person that’d be my landlord a few minutes past three that day” he proceeds, shaking his head with a smile, “mom wasn’t having that.”

Though the winter conditions make for a brutal atmosphere to willingly reside in without many layers to bundle up in, Andrew spits in the face of the frigid air over what he considers to be the greater good, unphased by the weather. “Something was just so off about her that morning. I told her that I felt sick and awful, but it’s like she had skin in the game over this hunt like my father did” the man continues, the fog of his breath flying in the direction of the wind.

“Eventually, I just caved in and agreed to go on the hunt. I figured we could get it done in time for me to leave for the meeting” he proceeds to explain, visualising the surroundings that had made up that cloudy day as if he were still in the moment himself. “Fast forward about twenty minutes. My father and I are deep in the woods and I just get this sinking feeling like something’s off” he says with a squint, “I don’t know much about hunting, but being there with only pistols was odd.”

Envisioning the birds that flew over the treeline in the lightened skies above, Andrew’s tongue breaches his mouth and curls at his bottom lip, creating a gentle suction that pulls the flesh of it inward. “I couldn’t wrap my mind around why we’d gone out into the woods to hunt for this mystery man I’d never met and a payment that I’m assuming this is still for until it dawned upon me...” the man confesses, staring into the camera with a gentle sway of his head from one side to the other.

“...who the hell goes hunting for deer with a pistol?”

“Those things travel around here all day and night” Andrew recalls his father speaking aloud, the older man having failed to realise that his son has caught onto the lingering parts of the tale he’d spun that don’t line up the way they were meant to. Looking around the woods with wandering eyes, the original Carrion family patriarch pays no mind to the potential animals that roam the forest, his feet simply continuing to move forward in search of a quiet, secluded path to follow.

Approaching his father with a quicker pace than the one he’d journeyed this far with, Andrew discards his pistol along the ground at the same moment that he thrusts his foot into the back of the man’s knee, forcing him to the ground before what’s unfolding can even be noticed. Succumbing to the unbecoming plot that he thinks up on the spot, the younger of the two men grabs his father’s inner elbow and uses his free hand to redirect the handgun’s barrel.

*pop*

In one motion, Andrew forces his father’s finger to squeeze upon the trigger with every ounce of his might before watching a hole open on the opposite side of the man’s head, torn through by a bullet that spews the older gentleman’s brains along the ground. Collapsing lifelessly into the dirt, the gambling addict’s body crashes into the ground and falls completely still whilst his dominant hand’s loosened grip keeps the firearm held within it, the barrel still smoking from the gunshot.

“I don’t know if anything- other than Sophie’s birth- had sparked that much joy out of me in my entire life” Andrew confesses, keeping his pupils directed toward the machine that documents his every word on video. “I made sure to make it look like a suicide so no one would assume anything of me” the father continues, shaking his head as he speaks further upon that day.

“When I’d walked back to the house, my mother was in the kitchen doing something- I’m still not sure what” he proceeds, vividly able to make out the events that comprised the fateful day. “She didn’t know it was me coming in, so when she heard the door open- she’d thought it was my dad” Andrew remarks, nodding to the camera before turning the bob of his head into a shake of dismissal and disgust, “it was the second thing I’d heard- the first was hearing Sophie cry in my bedroom.”

“Did you make it look like an accident?” the mother questions aloud from the kitchen, too focused on the bag that she stuffs with whatever valuables she can strip from the trailer’s interior. Receiving no reply, the woman continues to prepare the bag for what can only be considered an unannounced departure, paying no mind to the footsteps that she still assumes are the ones belonging to the man she’d anticipated the return of.

“To this day, I don’t think I’m capable of squeezing my hands together with as much force as I’d wrapped my hands around that woman’s throat” Andrew confesses, unable to hold back the smirk that the memory he thinks of fondly sparks from him. “I snapped her neck like it was a pencil” the man communicates, still pleased at his actions even with the benefit of hindsight, “I framed my father for it, let the police find his body in the woods, I took Sophie and left.”

With one leg crossed over the other, the father turns his eyes toward the analog watch on his wrist before taking surprise in the late hour of the evening that meets him. “The police never suspected a thing. I moved in with Daria instead of the flat I’d been approved for, she got pregnant with Liv, and I’m sure you guys know the rest” Andrew concludes, visibly pained to have made it to the point in the story that he now reaches.

“Liv, Elaine, Galen... I’m filming this now because- in the event that something happens to me- this tape will find its way to you” the man declares, adjusting his posture so he can sit upright and present himself to the audience he anticipates accordingly. “That stress I mentioned last night wasn’t actually stress” Andrew admits apologetically, disappointed in his lack of something better to offer, “I don’t know what to call it, so I’ve just been calling it ‘stress’ since I first noticed it.”

Bowing his head in shame, the man begins cycling through his thoughts in hopes of finding something more fitting to describe it as, speaking aloud whilst he does so. “My head starts feeling light and my hands feel a static-like ping- y’know, like the one you get when your hand falls asleep?” he proceeds, momentarily returning his gaze to the lens as he nods. 

“It’s just like this violent fit that my mind goes to. But- in that moment- it also gives me that feeling you get when you’re kind of drunk and more willing to do the stupid stuff you’d never do if you were sober” Andrew describes, still fascinated by his inability to fully verbalise it. “I’d never killed anyone before what happened with my parents” the man assures, shaking his head at a loss, “and- even though I’ve had moments where I felt that urge again- I’d never followed up on it since.”

Sorrowful, the man leans back in his seat once more as he stares back toward the camera, slightly frustrated at the need he feels to continue speaking. “The strangest thing about it though is that I can control it. Even though I’d had those urges, I’d always had that wherewithal in moments where my first thought was to just act on it and consider the consequences later” Andrew confesses, voicing his refusal of it, “even when it was at its worst, I knew I could never do what I did again.”

Shaking his head again, the man presses his palms together and hurriedly begins to rub the surface of his skin against itself, trying to manufacture warmth in the frigid climate. “I could live with myself knowing that my parents deserved what happened to them, but what I could never live with would be leaving Sophie to grow up without her father” Andrew declares, voicing the vow he’d made for himself, “I made it my mission to be the father to my children that my parents never were.”

Suddenly stricken with a bout of overwhelming sorrow, the man’s eyes fall away from the lens once more, taking to the distance of his snow-covered backyard as he simmers with the events of the last few days. With his mouth slightly agape, Andrew stares forward in silence as the eviscerating sensation of dread consumes him, swallowing him whole like a snake to its suffocated prey.

“I never knew Sophie had something wrong with her. I still don’t know that it’s the same thing that I have, but ever since she was arrested, I’d always just assumed that- if there was anything wrong with her- it was something she got from her mother” Andrew promises, shaking his head as a salty tear begins to form on his eyelid, following his line of sight as it takes back toward the camera.

“The idea that you have it, Liv... that horrifies me” he admits, trying to bring himself to think of his daughter with the added context of the same strife he’d suffered through in his youth. “It doesn’t drain me of hope, don’t get me wrong. I know that there’s a way to overcome it” Andrew proceeds, pleading with the girl- in the event that this tape is needed to reach her- to share the same optimism.

“Even after what happened with Sophie, I refused to give into those urges... that plague inside of me” he compellingly remarks, shaking his head in refusal at the notion that it’s something that will inevitably grow too powerful to control, “I’d gone so long without feeding into them that it was almost like I was the one in control of it. The longer that stayed the same, the more it became impossible to justify acting on them. After all, I’d gone so long without succumbing to it.”

Ashamed, Andrew’s nostrils flare as his lip curls, disgusted with the fact that he’s forced to face. “But then I saw this one kid trying to snatch a lady’s daughter out from her car in broad daylight” the man murmurs, his tone lowering as he conceals his anger as best as he can, “I marched across that parking lot and threw that scumbag around you would’ve thought he was a doll. I don’t know if I realised it then, but I almost took a pair of shears to his throat before some cashiers stopped me.”

Clearing his throat, Andrew wipes his runny nose on the back of his hand as his knees begin to bounce over an increasing anxiety, one that prompts the man to try and regain control of his breathing whilst he speaks. “I didn’t know about the guy in a parking lot over that had caught the thing on video when I went hunting for the bastard” the father confesses, shaking his head toward the lens as he shrugs at the recollection, “I couldn’t risk him taking me to court and taking everything from us.”

With a nod, the man keeps his stare held upon the camera’s lens as his tale finally reaches the moment of the present day, one that sparks a frown to embolden itself upon his face. “I stabbed the guy about two towns over. I buried his body under the dirt that I just had a pair of labourers lay the foundation for the shop’s terrace on” Andrew explains with a nod, “then, the other night- I met Ian in the park a few blocks away from the school so Liv wouldn’t have to.”

Standing by his decisions, the man refuses to present himself as a villain for the atrocities he’d allowed himself to commit, fully devoting himself to the belief that they were all warranted. “I’m sorry that Sophie doesn’t have anyone to visit her in prison anymore, I really am- but I could not take the risk of that prick stalking my family until we gave in and played with his stupid little game” he continues, seemingly no closer to finishing his admission of guilt than he’d started.

“He had a notepad with some names, and numbers, and addresses and such on it. So, I went to the place that I knew had gotten him back involved in all of this” Andrew proceeds, leaving none of his actions up for interpretation, “I shot Coleen Wolf’s mother, texted her ex husband to meet her at the home, and then called the cops and planted the gun in his car before they showed up.”

Seeing no reason to present hesitation now, Andrew carries on with the timeline of events now that the truth has come to the spotlight, aware of what the intention of this recording is and refusing to leave its purpose unfulfilled. “Before that, I went to the factory that Coleen had gone to and I shot her too” he concludes, finally reaching the point in which he’d set out to build on, “even though I can justify the other two for myself, those last three I justify for you, Liv.”

Again sitting upright with his face taking toward the machine he’d set up not too far away from his person, Andrew stares intently into the lens that films his every move. “If you have the same thing that I have- the same thing your sister probably has... I can’t let it get the best of you” the father cries, beginning to well up with emotion as he speaks, “framing the girl’s father was just a way to cover my tracks. The only reason I had to kill Coleen was so that it wouldn’t be you.”

Quickly shaking his head at the argument otherwise, Andrew acknowledges its existence without providing it with substance. “Yeah, I know it’s not a feasible plan to kill anyone I might be worried my daughter will let out her plague on so she doesn’t get caught in the same thing that Sophie did, but I don’t care” the man sighs, wearing a smile as he shakes his head, “it gives me a little bit of time to help Liv get her mind right for now. And if that’s how I spend the rest of my life- so be it.”

Pressing his eyelids shut, the man presents the most genuine smile he’s offered the camera thus far as his face holds itself toward the air, kissed by the wintery frost as the streaking tears warm his cheeks. “I’d rather be the one with blood on my hands then let you, Liv, be the one with it on yours” Andrew proceeds, intently looking back into the device that stands across from him, “under no circumstances will I allow the sins of the father to be the sins of his daughter.”

Stepping out of his seat, Andrew approaches the camera and cautiously disconnects it from the tripod and begins descending the patio’s rear steps toward the snowy lawn whilst speaking. “If I die or get arrested or anything happens to me, I’ve got a plan on how to get this thing across to you. The only reason I film this is to give you closure” the man explains, looking into the lens whilst he does so, “I’m not a bad man... I’m just a loving father.”

Shaking his head, Andrew accepts the terms that he agrees to despite their lack of existence as printed font, viewing this oath he takes to those he loves as a contract he’s fully aware of the implications to. “I never had a father who’d be willing to kill for me... only one willing to kill me” the man proclaims, declaring his allegiance to the souls he directs this tape to, “the first day of my life when I actually had a real family was the day that I held my little Sophie in my arms.”

“I admit that I hold some hatred for her becoming everything that I hate most about myself, but the real reason that I’ve cut her out of my life is because I love her too much to admit that I failed her” Andrew concedes defeat, grimacing at the physical pain that his ultimate confession leaves him with, “maybe there was some mistake that I made along the way, but I can never allow myself to fail the people I love ever again.”

Coming to a stop in the centre of the backyard, the man looks deep into the camera’s lens as he prepares to finish his proclamation, feeling as though he’s already said more than what needs to be spoken. “I’m sorry if this isn’t the man you thought that I was. I’m sorry if this hurts you in ways that I can’t even imagine” Andrew apologises, standing by the decision he’s made, “I hope I never have to do any of this again. But I bear the responsibility that comes with this choice.”

Determined, the man’s eyelids inch closer toward each other as his finger rests upon one of the camera’s many buttons, ready to cut the video off as he makes his peace.

“No matter what it takes, no matter the cost, and no matter what I have to do...

... I will never fail my family again.”

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 13 Sep 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e9-the-wrong-idea-of-sickness> Friday, 3rd December 2038 <

“Inmate 64470, your phone time is up” a large, black woman in a brown uniform remarks with casual dismissal of any claims otherwise, “get out of the booth and follow the guards back to your cell.” Spouting vigour back toward the prison’s officer, a thinner black woman follows the order that was given to her, making sure to not do so without offering passive insults she knows the penitentiary’s staff is unable to present her with consequences over.

Three booths over, a head of artificially-darkened hair sits in a chair with the palm of her hand wrapped around a handset telephone, eyes propped open out of surprise. “I didn’t think anyone was gonna answer the phone” Sophie confesses, her tone slightly more enthusiastic in light of the unanticipated result, “I’ve been trying dad for the last couple of days, but he’s never answered.”

“I’m not really surprised by that” a flabbergasted Elaine retorts, briefly looking over her shoulder to the child that continues to play in her living room, keeping half of an eye out amidst her newfound preoccupation. “Neither am I” Sophie responds, hanging her head with a slightly defeated smile, the only interaction she’s had with her father being the one that had come about one year after her incarceration.

“I heard the two of you got married... Congratulations” the inmate remarks, changing the topic to a more light-hearted note in light of the change in her demeanour, her entry to the set of phone booths having come without the expectation of the visit being fruitful. “Oh, thank you. We’re, uh-” Elaine replies, still carrying the slight touch of an artificially-pleasant tone in her voice, “-we’re very happy together.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured as much” Sophie smiles, staring at the beige-painted tabletop that she sits at, nodding along with the reply she provides, “I always thought the two of you got along well.” Turning her back to the window, the watching mother sets her full sights upon the living room whilst going without a word, her silence noticed by the other end of the line and understood. Though not on purpose, Elaine’s refusal to speak is brought on by the outright uncertainty over what to say.

“Did dad tell you about the last time he saw me?” the imprisoned girl wonders aloud, genuinely curious as to what the family has been up to since her arrest, “the time a couple months after my sentencing?” Pressing her lips together, Elaine stares intently at the floor as she considers how to reply, still effectively shaken too greatly to process the conversation that she’s vocally accepted being a part of.

“Yeah” the woman answers honestly, nodding as she crosses her arms with the watch in tow, its screen facing upward in the palm of her right hand. “Did he tell you what happened?” Sophie follows up, trying to make the most of the short and unsure answers that she receives from the other line. Still widened, Elaine’s eyes start pulling as far from the watch’s face as it can manage, trying to create separation before the woman who holds it forces her stare back to the device.

“He said he couldn’t recognise who was sitting behind the glass” she confesses, a response that- although greatly displeasing- is one that the inmate had already grown to expect. “He said that whatever ‘it’ was is someone he didn’t consider his family or his daughter” Elaine continues, adding emphasis to the remark that doesn’t necessarily need anymore than it already carried, “now we don’t talk about you.”

Though she hadn’t believed that pleasantries would be offered in the event of an answer to her call, the fact of her status within what remains of the family strikes Sophie harder than it’d been anticipated. Though only a mere inch or two, separation establishes itself between the inmate’s ear and the phone itself, still allowing her to hear the woman on the other line as she stares blankly at the concrete wall that sits across from her.

“Not long after your father and I got married, we found out I was pregnant” Elaine continues, noticing the dead air that lingers between her replies to be the reception of her remarks by the young woman on the other line, the call’s continuation making it clear that an ear is still listening in. “You’ve got a baby brother named Galen now. He just turned four about three months ago” she proceeds, again met without a verbal reply from the other line.

“I’m sure he knows it’s not possible, but your father is trying to forget you” Elaine confesses amidst the additional silence she’s met with, not knowing what else to say in order to fill the space where words are meant to occupy. “He doesn’t mention you, he’s packed all of your things away in the attic and he’s just-” the speech continues without interruption, the pause only coming when she, herself, brings it into existence, “-he’s just tried to move on from you.”

On the other end of the line, Sophie’s eyes hold a blank, empty stare toward the tabletop that she sits at, barely able to make out the words that her sister’s stepmother offers as her emotions struggle within in an effort to find out which one will present itself. “Liv went out to meet with Ian a few days ago. We heard about the follow-up documentary he wanted to film” Elaine explains, shaking her head in refusal before continuing, “your father will never do it.”

“Ian’s going to hold that over Livy’s head until he does” Sophie admits, quickly returning the phone to the side of her head at the conclusion the recipient of her call brings herself to, “I told him not to but he didn’t feel like there was any other ammunition he could use. I didn’t even know she was cured until he told me some girl from school clued him in on it.”

“She’s not cured, per-say... She’s just assisted in composing her tics and impulses a lot better than she was before” Elaine corrects, shaking her head as she stares back toward the living room, “and it doesn’t matter one way or another. Your father will pack us up and move us to another country as long as it means not having to bring you, or the past, or what happened up again.”

“Sure, and Ian will just follow you there. Ms. Kirkpatrick, I’m not sure you understand how adamant about this he is. He’s desperate to restart whatever kind of stardom he had when the doc first came out” Sophie explains, visibly distressed over the potential that’s brought upon by the man’s threat, “he paid off some of the inmates in here to rough me up a few months back just to get me to agree to do it.”

“Sophie, I don’t know what you want me to say” Elaine replies, finally stepping away from the kitchen in an effort of re-entering the living room, “it doesn’t matter what dirt Ian has on us, your father will not take part in anything that involves you or what you did.” Rolling her eyes, Sophie’s head begins to shake at the remark about Andrew’s stubbornness before they suddenly begin to squint, pressing closer together as a thought dawns upon her.

“Wait, why is Livy even hiding the fact that she’s better now in the first place?” Sophie questions aloud, leaning back in her seat with one arm crossed over the inner elbow of the other, “you guys are way too wealthy to be collecting disability or something over it. What’s with that?” Leaning down to collect her son from the floor, Elaine bounces Galen in her arm as she ventures toward the stairs, beginning to climb them one at a time whilst she replies.

“There’s a medication that she wanted to stay on and decided that the way to make sure we didn’t take her off of it was to pretend she was only making slight improvements” Elaine explains, too preoccupied with accompanying her son to his bed for nap time to speak as if the woman on the other line were any different from a coworker she’d known for years, her lines of dialogue now coming with an unintentional comfort.

“I guess she must’ve thought she was in too deep after the charade was kept up for long enough” the mother continues, eventually reaching the top-most step before rounding the corner for her child’s bedroom. “Were the pills laced with twenty four-karat gold?” Sophie wonders aloud, confused by her sister’s unwavering need for the medication that she seemingly can’t function without.

“No. According to her, they afford her an extra second or two to think things over. It slows time down or something along those lines” Elaine responds, her conclusion being one that subtly shifts the inmate’s confusion into something more akin to intrigue. “Unless she can’t function in school, that doesn’t make any sense” Sophie retorts, still unable to find the connection between the meds and her sister’s devotion to them, “is she being loaded with schoolwork or something?”

“Not exactly” Elaine responds, portraying a pleasant and happy face toward Galen as she lays him into his bed, putting him down for the nap she knows him to be in need of. “Apparently the same girl that told Ian about Liv is one of her bullies. Liv punched her in the face a few weeks ago” the woman concludes, struggling for answers better than the vague one she’s able to offer, “she’s pretty paranoid about that girl spilling her guts about it and it’s leading her to think stupid things.”

“Stupid things?” Sophie quips back, amused by the inherent ambiguity in that statement, “what the hell does that mean?” Taking a brief interlude from the discourse to set her son down for a nap, Elaine gently closes the door to his room before making back toward the ground level. “She thinks she’s suffering from the same thing that led you to jail” the mother replies, the way in which she speaks indicating that she knows not what to make of such a conclusion.

With a dismissive shake of her head, Sophie smirks at the notion whilst tilting her head back, trying not to laugh at the connection that’s apparently been drawn. “That’s flattering” the inmate jokes, bouncing one foot off the ground in a way that causes her knee to repeatedly lift and fall beyond the edge of the small table, “if you need to ease her mind though, I’d remind her that what made her punch that girl in the mouth is different than what led me to- well, y’know.”

Slightly becoming reintroduced with her earlier discomfort, Elaine takes notice of the ease in which the conversation now rolls before begging the question that lingers at the front of her mind. “What do you mean?” the woman wonders aloud, the inquiry one that adds little context other than the request itself, but being one that felt necessary to present in the moment.

“She punched the girl in the face because she was bullying her. It’s what anybody else would do” Sophie reassures, believing herself capable of easily dissuading any of her younger sister’s concerns with a simple juxtaposition, “what I did happened because I couldn’t control it. There was just this urge in me that took over and I snapped. I don’t know what it was that came over me, but I know I couldn’t help myself but follow through with what my thoughts were.”

Her walk slowing noticeably, Elaine continues around the bannister and begins venturing toward the kitchen once more, pausing for a moment as a second question presents itself concerningly. “What do you mean by that?” the mother questions, quickly thinking better of the spoken wonder before restating it, “what did you mean when you said that you couldn’t control it?”

Somewhat puzzled, Sophie turns her eyes toward one of the corners of her wall-mounted table as she ponders the thought, formulating her reply internally before offering a final product. “I mean it was kind of like an urge that I had and couldn’t stop from acting on” she responds, trying to speak as if she were confident in the conclusion she makes, “when I felt like there was an opportunity to act on those urges, there was a part of my head that clicked into place and got me to take it.”

Falling silent, Elaine’s stroll toward the opposite end of the home comes to a conclusion directly at the halfway point between the living room and kitchen, her feet stopping their progression toward the still-running dishwasher as she stares forward without a word. Her bottom lip barely falling from the one that sits atop it, the woman meets her husband’s disowned, eldest offspring without anything of value, prompting the inmate’s smirk to begin lessening.

“Are you still there?” Sophie inquires, briefly pulling her head away from the handset to glance at the receiver before overhearing the faintest voice that pulls her back in. “Did you ever have those impulses before and not act on them?” Elaine soon wonders aloud, begging the question that she’s soon prompted to repeat, asked to do so by the other end who’d missed the first half.

“Did you ever have the impulses before? Your first... uh, I mean... before what happened with your mother...” Elaine corrects, trying to speak in ways that skirt over the deeds that landed the inmate behind bars, “...did you ever have one of those impulses before then and not act on them?”

The inquiry not being one that she’d ever asked herself even after all the years that have passed since her incarceration, Sophie leans back against her chair once more as she ponders internally, politely requesting a moment to consider. “I mean, it was nothing really violent like what I ended up doing” the inmate replies, shrugging her shoulders as the contemplations reach her mind, “I had impulses to break things or hit people before. But not stuff I acted on.”

“Why didn’t you?” Elaine questions back almost immediately, trying to take advantage of the sincerity that the young woman now in her mid-twenties affords her. “Because it was really overwhelming. The urges were strong and it’d make my hands shake and stuff, but it just felt too weird... Like I was going crazy” Sophie responds, trying her best to put the sensations into words, “things kind of felt fuzzy and they made me feel sick. Everything was just moving so fast that I-”

“-just wanted it all to slow down?” Elaine interjects, cutting the young woman off by finishing the statement on her behalf, catching the inmate by a slight surprise. “Yeah... I just wanted it all to slow down” Sophie concludes, allowing her answer to linger for a moment before her eyes squint, prompting her to wonder to herself internally the longer that she’s met without an immediate follow-up by the woman on the other end of the line, “why?”

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

“It’s just all a lot to sort of make sense of” Derby confesses, sitting with one of two ends to a hoagie in hand, the one that sits within her reach already having been halfway consumed, “I mean, it kind of adds up, but I still don’t fully understand why she’d hide it for so long.” Conceding equal loss, Andrew shrugs his shoulders as he bites into one of the slices of pickles he’d taken from within the sandwich’s halved loaf.

“We think she was just too embarrassed to admit that she was fibbing about it the whole time” he confesses, trying his best to blend the truth into the fictional tid-bits that he adds in. “Oh, yeah- that makes sense” Derby responds, struggling to bring herself to eat anymore than she already has now that she’s becoming privy to what the father wishes her to know, “I just wish she would’ve let me know I could’ve helped in some way.”

“She’s still trying to make sense of it all herself” Andrew reassures, waving off any other notion but the one he wishes to make evident outright, “when a family goes through what ours went through, it’s easy for all of the stress to convince someone of something that’s just not true.” Nodding, Derby displays her agreement with the man’s claims as obviously as she can, though it’s clear that some aspects still leave her struggling to process.

“But she isn’t actually capable of killing anyone, is she?” the rebellious teen responds, watching the amused grin arise upon the face of her friend’s father. “Don’t get me wrong- anyone is capable of killing anyone. It’s happened for centuries, we’ve just advanced past the need for it as a whole” Andrew clarifies, quick to offer assurance in spite of the initial offering, “but Liv wouldn’t hurt a fly... Not unless it took the form of a preppy little nepo-baby like that classmate of yours.”

“Got it!” Derby enthusiastically proclaims, smiling out of place of uncertainty over how to initially react, a second curiosity soon finding its way over her mind, “can I ask though... why tell me all of this?” With the inquiry reaching his ears, Andrew takes another slow bite from his salty pickle stick as he searches for the answer in his head, allowing the girl across from him to reiterate the question. 

“I know you want my help keeping an eye out for Liv and all, that part’s clear” Derby reassures, returning her sandwich to the paper wrapper that sits before her, “but what’s so special about me that makes you trust me so much?” Nodding along with the young woman’s fair quandary, Andrew fits the final bit of his mid-meal snack between his teeth before preparing to reply whilst wiping his hands clean.

“My daughter had a friend named Caden when she was still with us. And at the time that everything happened, Caden was dating this girl named Izzy” Andrew explains, resting his right arm along the stoop that sits at the base of the window that sits beside him. “Izzy was the same kind of rebel that you are. She was very intelligent and was constantly overlooked because of the way she carried herself” the father recalls, a faint smile worn on his face, “but she was an excellent person.”

Nodding to himself, Andrew adjusts his posture in the seat to ensure he fully presses against the chair he occupies. “You remind me a lot of that girl. I’m hoping that you’re every bit as good of a friend and of a person to Liv as Izzy was to Caden and my daughter” the man concludes, pressing his lips together in lieu of the regret for their fates that he wishes to hide at all costs, “and because I need to be able to trust somebody, I’m decided to trust you.”

Genuinely flattered and appreciative, Derby’s face lights up with a smile that she soon forces herself to hide beneath the lowering of her face, a gratitude taken from the man’s comments that she’s too pleased to respond vocally to. For a moment, the rebel with a cause sits with the niceties before looking up, allowing them to acclimate themselves with her before assuring the man of his conclusion, “you can trust me” she responds.

Eventually returning to his car, Andrew starts the engine and fastens his seatbelt before sitting back for a moment and clearing his mind, eyes staring at the school building his vehicle had been left parked facing. With no specific expression on his face, the man lets the vents that face him strike with cold air as they attempt to progressively warm themselves, though the sudden chill does little to affect the automobile’s only occupant.

“Alright” he mutters beneath his breath with a straight face, nodding to himself before pulling his sights away from the scene that’s afforded to him through the windshield, eyes venturing toward the empty seat beside him. Retrieving a pencil from within the cupholders just off to his right, Andrew flips open the cover of a notepad and runs through the various pages that line it’s inside, eventually stopping at one filled with names and other information written in handwriting not of his own.

|

“Cry me a river, Coleen!” Susana shouts back from the foyer of their home as she walks off, directing her disdain toward the child that stomps down the main staircase. “What the hell is wrong with you!?” the woman’s daughter exclaims mid-descent, the frustration and vigour in her voice too obvious for the mother to ignore, “he’s done nothing to deserve this! You’re just trying to make him look like a bad father so you can walk into court pretending to smell like sunshine and rainbows!”

“That man is a filthy bastard! He’s the cheapest waste of air on the planet in addition to being a bad father!” Susana shouts back, her finger pointed in the face of her now equal-level offspring. “Then what the hell does that make you!?” Coleen fights back, raising her voice to meet the level that her mother’s pitch sits at, “all you do is pamper yourself every day with the thousands of dollars he’s already given you!”

“He should be giving me a whole hell of a lot more!” the teenager’s bitter parent rebukes, dismissing the claims that her daughter makes in favour of raising a different line of questioning, “why do you even bother defending that scumbag anyway!? He never comes around to see you! He never even bothered to send you a card in the mail for your birthday!”

“He doesn’t come around because you won’t let him until he starts paying you child support!” Coleen answers, the retort one that stumps her mother at first, immediately compelling her to confront the teenager that stands in her presence. “Did he tell you that!?” Susana bites back, eyes widened as she begins attempting to speak further, trying to follow the question up with her own retort before stumbling over her words and inevitably conceding, “you know what? That’s, oh- that’s...”

Turning around to walk off, Susana leaves the conversation that her daughter is as eager to continue as she is to depart from. “Go ahead and tell me that isn’t the truth, ‘cause I know damn well what I heard the other day when I walked in to hear you telling him to pay up!” Coleen shouts back, the revelation immediately drawing her mother’s spite and hostilities higher.

“Who the hell do you think you are, little girl!?” the older-appearing-than-intended woman bites back, matching her daughter’s shouting tone whilst taking her frustrations out on the woman who calls her character into question, “I don’t need to justify myself to a spoiled little brat like yourself!”

“That’s rich coming from someone that spoils me with daddy’s money” Coleen blurts back, immediately sparking the visage of outright offence that her mother takes in the riposte. “I don’t know who the hell I am, mom! That’s the whole, fucking point!” the livid teenager continues to bicker, “I’m doing everything I can to set myself up to get out of here as fast as I can because no big, fancy house is worth the hell that you make my life out to be!”

“Oh, honey... Oh, honey!” Susana chirps back, filling the air with insulted and amusement-feigning empty words without anything of value to respond with. “I don’t care what I turn out to be! The only thing that’s important is that I don’t want to end up turning into you...” Coleen barks aloud, aware that her mother has nothing of importance to respond with, and instead takes the opportunity to dig into her skin, “... an empty shell of a woman whose only worth has been in opening her legs!”

From the enraged sight of her mother’s face to a sudden squeeze of her eyelids, Coleen braces against the open hand that strikes her across the face, knocking her to the ground without the faintest hesitation. “Get out of my house!” Susana commands, throwing her finger to the door that her daughter angrily throws herself off the ground in favour of, stepping out of the home and slamming the entrance shut on her way out.

Without so much as offering another word, Coleen storms down the driveway as her mother follows suit, cashing after her with bare feet whilst hurling half-baked insults. Falling on deaf ears, the words do nothing to prevent the teenager from staring her car and pulling out of the driveway before Susana could do anything to stop her, hitting the open road with intentions set on reaching preferable pastures as far from the house of horrors she drives away from.

Within an hour, Coleen’s vehicle finds itself parked along a sidewalk along the edges of the city’s downtown, stationed outside of an empty warehouse with shattered windows that no amount of eye damage can help from being noticed. Alone and left without a shoulder to cry on or a pair of ears to vent to, the disgruntled teenager angrily sits beside a barrel fire whilst sipping from a bottle of cheap wine so recently purchased that it still has the orange “on sale” sticker along its bottleneck.

Seething to herself, Coleen passes a glance at the glass bottle’s exterior to take notice of the liquor’s level, its surface roughly three inches away from reaching the bottom. “Holy fuck” she stutters, feeling the haze that comes with the speed in which she’d nearly finished the entire beverage, stirring from the effects that bring a brief chuckle out of her.

“You’re not supposed to be here” a masculine voice calls out from one of the adjacent corridors that lead from a nearby set of makeshift office spaces and into the wider factory floor that the buzzed girl occupies. Quickly leaping off the stool that she’d sat on, the startled Coleen accidentally pulls her arm back too quickly for her hand to tighten in time, instead releasing the condensation-covered bottle from her palm and allowing it to shatter along the ground.

“What the fuck!?” the hammered student exclaims, suddenly sporting a temporary sobriety in the face of the fear that she’d been stricken with at the unexpected guest, needing a moment to collect herself before she can identify just who it was that had interrupted her personal time. “Then again, you shouldn’t be drinking either” Andrew murmurs as he continues his approach, hands tucked into the pouch of the grey hoodie he’d adorned in the face of the cold, midwestern elements.

“What the fuck are you doing here!?” Coleen blurts out, recognising the man’s face with little issue as she continues to retreat, though her ability to move is far more hampered than that of her visitor. “I didn’t feel the need to forewarn you that I’d be showing up here since you couldn’t afford me the same when you walked up to my shop the other week” Andrew answers, his stroll both casual and unassuming, though its lack of speed is outmatched by the staggered teenager’s own retreat.

Keeping herself from toppling over, Coleen halts her back-tracking just as she passes the open flames, instead spreading her arms just enough to maintain something that attempts to resemble balance. Trying to regain her wits, the intoxicated minor watches the older man continue to slowly approach with an unamused expression, his unassuming demeanour allowing her enough peace of mind to organise her thoughts more effectively.

“Don’t tell my parents about this” Coleen calmly requests, blinking more rapidly than usual in an attempt to better focus on the situation at hand, trying to become more accustomed to the decrepit surroundings that they now share. “Your parents are never going to find out about this. I didn’t come here to dig up dirt to send to your old man” Andrew replies, his reassurance enough to direct the teenager’s mind toward a different line of thought.

“Why are you here then?” Coleen soon questions aloud, her ears taking a momentary notice of the cracking that the barrel fire beside her emanates before focusing on the sound of tiny pebbles being dragged along the concrete floor by the man’s shoes. “Because I’ve been led to believe that my daughter may have been justified in that punch you seem to be all worked up over” Andrew answers, his lips slightly puckered, “it sounds like you’re not as innocent as you make yourself out to be.”

“So? It doesn’t look like your daughter is as mentally-challenged as she makes herself out to be” Coleen retorts, a gesture that prompts Andrew to smirk as he conceals her chuckle. “No, she isn’t” the man confesses without much reluctance, his gradual approach continuing as he nods, “and from the sound of it, that’s not a detail you’re too shy about wanting people to know.”

“What does that mean?” Coleen questions back, her regained composure allowing her to take a more confrontational and purposefully-irritating stance than when startled. “Well amongst a whole lot of things, it means that I know who spilled the beans to Ian Tomlinson about my daughter not being entirely truthful about her predicament” Andrew responds, watching the change in the lonely teenager’s visage assure him of the accuracy to his claim.

“She shouldn’t be pretending to be autistic then” Coleen rebukes, a gesture that the man across from her can’t bring himself to entirely argue against. “You’re right, but that’s also not business that you should be sticking your nose in” Andrew responds, his slow, turtle-like pace leaving plenty of room to still exist between himself and the bratty teenager, “but with the kind of lengths you’ve gone to try and torment my child over it, I’m pretty sure you already knew what you were doing.”

“Maybe I did” Coleen replies without much in the way of hesitation, a response that prompts the man just ahead of her to press his teeth together and pull in a long breath that bellows out the sound of a snake-like hiss. “You deserve it, though. Your whole family is crazy” the young woman continues, watching the man’s feet stop in their place as she speaks, “your daughter’s faking being a retard, and your other daughter is a fucking murderer.”

His unassuming demeanour lowering into a dissatisfied grimace at the forced recollection of his family’s past, Andrew’s ear refuses to block out the conclusion that the young woman across from him leads into, his eyes instead falling toward the ground out of shame. “It makes me wonder if you knew they were fucking sick...” Coleen dares, becoming more brutal in her comments and intentionally malicious as she does, “...maybe you’re sick too.”

Concealing his anger excellently, Andrew seethes quietly as the girl across from him begins to laugh, amused as she becomes more emboldened in her malevolent mannerisms. “Let’s see, if one of you is a murderer and another is a liar...” Coleen persists, filled with liquid courage that only further aids in directing her toward the antagonistic mirage she erects in the man’s direction, “...maybe you’re the nasty kind of sick.”

With an unamused squint in his eye, the man’s face lifts toward the woman that stands across from him, plastering a softcore-esque seductive visage upon her face as she steps forward. “Are you the kind of sick that likes girls you’re not supposed to, sir?” Coleen quips as she steps forward, stumbling halfway through her question as she taunts the man that looks at her with a straight face, “maybe you just wanted to take a little peak at-”

“That’s not why I’m here” Andrew interrupts, shaking his head as he stares off into the distance, having anticipated some psychological inspection on the girl’s behalf, only to appear disappointed at how unseriously he takes her. “Yes it is. Why else would you follow a drunk teenager into an abandoned warehouse?” Coleen replies, closing the distance between herself and the unflattered gentleman.

“Is the wife not doing it for you anymore, sir? Do you need a newer, younger model?” the girl continues to question, humouring the older man across from her enough to earn a genuine chuckle from him, “we both know you came here to do something you’re not supposed to.” Finally latching onto a claim that he can work with, Andrew responds with a loud sigh as he nods, paying no mind to the teenager’s laughter.

“Yes... I did come here to do something I’m not supposed to” the man responds as he looks back at the girl, pulling his hands free from his hoodie’s pouch as she stands before him, her taunting turning to torment. “Woah, what the fuck!?” Coleen hurriedly gasps, leaping back in shock as the charade is dropped, falling to the ground and losing her balance amidst the panic.

Though the young woman crawls back, Andrew remains standing where he’d initially stopped. “I’ve hated myself for it for as long as I can remember. The urges, the impulses, the having to pretend like I’m as normal and well-adjusted as everyone thinks I am” the father confesses, wearing the expression of struggle that comes with accepting the faults he’d tried to hide, “you’re completely right... I’m sick.”

“Wh- wh-?” Coleen stutters, crawling back with one arm out of total fear whilst using her other to press the shirt against herself, not time afforded to dawn it back upon herself. “I thought I could give my kids a better world to grow up in than my parents gave me. I thought they would have the chance to not succumb to their urges if I just showed them the love that my folks never gave me” Andrew continues to speak, beginning to resume his original approach toward the teen.

“The love that I tried to give my kids was as genuine as any other father’s would be. My family means everything to me. My parents couldn’t have cared less about it, but I am nothing without the people that I love” the father continues to explain, watching tears well up in the horrified expression of the strikingly keen student.

“Please...” Coleen whimpers, her bottom lip trembling as she desperately yearns to create separation between herself and the pursuing father, every ounce of regret she’s capable of having brings itself to the surface in such a moment. “I’m sick in the way that every father is sick... We’re sick in the way that we’d do anything to protect our families” Andrew explains, tears forming in his eyes as he walks forward, “if that means hiding some things from them... so be it.”

“Please!” Coleen screams, again pleading for the man to not follow through with the act that has her fully succumbed to fear, the howl she lets out bringing the man to a momentary pause. “For the love of your god, cover your fucking tits up” Andrew remarks, rolling his eyes as he looks toward the building’s battered ceiling, shaking his head in disappointment as the young woman begins shakily returning to her feet, “at least let this happen with some god damn dignity inta-”

Before he can finish his thought, Andrew watches the woman turn away for the faintest sight of aid. “Help!” Coleen screams as she takes off running in the opposite direction, leaving the man to shake his head as he turns to the side and lifts his hand toward her.

*pop, pop, pop*

To the tune of three gunshots, Coleen’s body slams into the concrete ground as a trio bullets rip through her back, two of them tearing through the front of her chest as the air goes quiet. Clenching teeth whilst growling at the sky, Andrew turns away from the gravely wounded teen as he angrily punches at the air, his fingers wrapped around the grip of the pistol that he’d used to shoot the helpless, inebriated student who’d never stood a chance at getting away.

With his free hand, Andrew shields his mouth as the young woman’s faint groans of pain ring throughout the almost entirely-silent factory. “Fucking hell” he murmurs through still pressed-together teeth, seething with the outcome of his actions before forcing himself to close the space that had separated the two.

“I swear, I thought what I had wasn’t something I could pass down” Andrew speaks aloud, knowing Coleen to still be alive through the continued groans that grow increasingly faint. “Everything that’s wrong with them was stuff they didn’t have to suffer through!” the father cries, dropping to a knee beside the dying girl’s body as he stares at the three bullet holes he’d inflicted upon her, blood rushing through the wounds in her chest.

“I learned how to get better. I learned how to ignore the impulses and keep everything under control, and then...” Andrew pleads, his sorrow turning into anger that he directs at the young woman whose death resides upon his hands, “...and then you ruined everything.” Nostrils flaring, the father watches Coleen’s hand extend toward the ground she’d yet to make it to before being gunned down, fighting to escape even when all hope is thoroughly lost as she gasps for air.

“You had to bring Ian... You had to bring that man back into our lives!” Andrew seethes, his hiss-like tone turning into a full onslaught of shouts that he aims at the cause of his strife. “He’s dead now because of you! And now you’re dead because of you, too!” the screaming parent barks, veins protruding from his skin as his vigour is fired at his victim just like his bullets had been, “and I swear to god, if almost twenty five years of overcoming those urges was for nothing ‘cause of-”

Stopping himself, Andrew lowers his voice back toward a reasonable tone, watching the girl take her last breaths before choosing to wrap up his remarks. “This had to be done” the man concedes, shaking his head as he watches the girl’s eyes begin to find their way toward a final, glossy state. “Nobody hurts my little girl” the man concludes, standing upright once more as the teenager bleeds out, staring into the factory’s distant walls, “I’m not going to lose another daughter.”

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 06 Sep 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e8-on-tape-to-the-tune-of-the-truth> Thursday, 2nd December 2038 <

“Everyone’s finally healed- at least as well as they’re going to” Liv responds, staring into the camera with a disheartened visage before beginning to hang her head, wearing the obvious signs of stress that appear even more unavoidable on film. “Asking them to re-open these wounds now- after all this time- it wouldn’t be fair to them” she persists, her hands coupled together as they sit atop her lap, eyes still held toward her floorboards.

Sitting on the front half of the chesterfield with her elbows pressing into her knees and hands coupled together at her chin, Elaine watches the recording of her stepdaughter from the prior night, her eyes finding difficulty in closing for even long enough to blink as her fixation grows. “I know that I kinda already re-opened my own wounds by making this, but my reasoning wasn’t the same” Liv explains, still focusing her sights on the ground, “there’s nothing for them to gain from this.”

Though her cup of coffee sits on the corner of the table just a few feet away, the beverage sits in the ceramic mug untouched and undisturbed, growing cold the longer it goes without the touch of the woman’s lips. Instead, Elaine’s eyes hold steadily upon her troubled stepdaughter’s figure, apologetic eyes carried toward the top of the girl’s head, which is the only distinguishing feature of hers that appears readily able to be viewed.

“I don’t know what other choice I have, though” Liv confesses, finally pulling her face away from the world at her feet and swiping the hanging strands of her hair back, “I don’t even know how to convince them. He may want to seem reasonable, but if he doesn’t get them on camera digging up the past, everyone’s gonna know that I’ve been putting up a charade.”

Though her face is now within the focus of the camera’s lens, Liv’s eyes refuse to meet it with her own attention, instead pulling back with the rest of her head and coming to a soft stop at the back of the chair before staring at her bed. In a moment of helplessness, the teenager’s hands slip from her lap and fall to her either side, reacting with the weightless sensation that comes over the rest of her body in a moment of dread.

“I should’ve never went up to Coleen in that bathroom... Either time” Liv confesses, the emotions that sport themselves in the form of her frown unmistakingly palpable, drawing a sorrow out of the woman that watches the film from the living room. “I’m in a no-win situation here, aren’t I?” the troubled teenager inquires, the question one wondered aloud to no one in particular, just voiced for the sake of being voiced, “what’s the point of picking either option?”

Resting on the grooves of her knuckles, Elaine’s chin presses into her hands as the tape continues on, nothing more than the silence that accompanies her stepdaughter’s recording to meet her ears. “Dad, mom, and Coleen... Those are the only people that know about my condition” Liv remarks, pulling in a deep breath that she soon sends out in a heavy sigh, “even if Ian decided to take the honourable route and not answer my question, I know who told him.”

For another few seconds, the falsehood-supporting teenager sits with her mind shrouded in dark, grim thoughts before suddenly adjusting her posture, sitting upright in her seat as her hands slip around the side of her head, pulling back her long, brunette locks. “Maybe this is what I fucking deserve” Liv concedes, a partial squint carried in her eyes as her face takes fully back toward the camera’s lens, “if I’d just kept the ruse up, I might’ve been able to just escape all of this.”

Visibly annoyed, the aggravated girl keeps her composure intact well enough to speak with an indoor voice, not wanting to raise her reflection with her parents asleep in their room down the hall. “The worst part about it too isn’t even just what it’s probably led to, the worst part about it is that my meds didn’t stop me” Liv explains, speaking with a more coherent and intentful intonation, “when I jumped her in the bathroom, I at least could hide behind the excuse that I wasn’t on them.”

Pausing, Liv shakes her head with a loss for explanation as her eyes turn away from the camera once more, an inarguable appearance of disgust wrapping around her expression like a snake coiling around its prey. “But I was on the meds this time around. I had that extra second, and I used it to do exactly what I would’ve done if I hadn’t had it” she concedes, clearly troubled with such an honesty, “maybe I would’ve done worse than just knock her on her flat ass, but I still did what I did.”

Balling her hand into a fist, Liv gives a fairly decent punch to the top of her thigh, right above her kneecap. “I acted on my impulse. I know that it was something that was warranted and that Coleen definitely deserved, but I had a massive call to make- and I chose the wrong call” she accepts, holding herself accountable for the issues that she’s birthed from the action, “now it’s coming back to haunt me. And even worse than the consequences it brings, it drains me of hope.”

Unable to look away from the television’s screen, Elaine keeps her ear attached to her stepdaughter’s every last word whilst her eyes swing with each new turn of the girl’s head. Her dread having turned itself into a bitter anger, Liv’s frustrations boil internally and direct themselves as herself, unable to do much more than offer an angry smile toward the far corner of her room.

“If I’m at the point now where I can make this mistake while on my meds, how much longer will it be until the pills can’t help keep me from doing what I did to Coleen last time around?” Liv wonders aloud, shaking her head with uncertainty toward the camera lens, “how long would it be before even that would get worse? How much longer will it be until I’m pushed to the point that I just lose it? How much longer until the meds can’t keep me from joining my sister in jail anymore? How much longer?”

Her ear being caught by the familiar sound of her husband’s car horn going off in the pattern that accompanies the locking of his doors, Elaine reaches for the camera she’s hooked various cords to and presses one of the buttons on its side panel. After a few seconds and as expected, the home’s main floor finds itself welcoming the return of the woman’s husband, who quickly sheds the toque from his head and stomps his boots on a floor mat, leaving two snow-covered spots.

“Sorry for taking so long- traffic was brutal on the highway” Andrew remarks, pulling down the zipper to his coat as he leaves his shoes at the door, walking for the living room he watches his wife stand from the sofa in, “some car must’ve hit a patch of black ice and driven right off the road. There were three others that went with it, so that first car must’ve taken some friends with th-”

Stopping his words as his eyes finally catch a look at his wife’s face, Andrew pulls his second arm from the coat’s sleeve and lets the article of clothing sit in his opposite hand. “Is something wrong?” he wonders after a few seconds, receiving no verbal response at first before his question is met with the same hush, leaving him to make his own attempt at uncovering the cause for such a quiet tone in the home.

Without needing to do much more than look off to the side, Andrew catches a look at the video camera that sits at the centre of his coffee table, his eyes eventually following the various cords that sit attached to it toward the flat screen television at the front of the room. “Is this-?” he wonders aloud, again receiving no answer from Elaine, leading his sights toward the cardboard box the machine had been stored away in before recalling its origins, prompting him to look back to his wife.

“I think you need to see this” Elaine remarks, her hands coupled together at her lap as she remains standing, waiting patiently for her husband to process the scene that he walks into. Without uttering a word, Andrew peers away from his wife and looks back to the machine’s box, his head flooding with awful memories that he’d pushed so far into the deepest recesses of his mind that their return to the forefront of his focus sends chills down his body and stiffens his muscles like a statue.

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

“You still haven’t told me what’s wrong” Liv explains, walking alongside her father whilst reaching her arm out toward him, accepting the vanilla ice cream cone that the man offers her. “That’s because it can wait” Andrew responds, holding a cone of his own near his chin as he joins his daughter in venturing toward an unoccupied group of picnic tables that sit beneath the shade of a pavilion, sitting atop a concrete foundation that’s surrounded by snow-covered ground.

“Wait until what?” Liv questions aloud, yet to bring the tip of her tongue toward the top-most scoop of vanilla ice cream, its base resting on the top of two other circular dollops of dessert. “Until we’re somewhere that’s nicer to look at than the sand and dirt covered bullshit this place calls a parking lot, alright?” Andrew questions back, lifting both eyebrows as he takes his sights toward his offspring for the moment, also yet to have graced his mouth with the frozen delight he wields.

“No one’s hurt, are they?” Liv soon wonders aloud, having tried to remain quiet and focus on her ice cream cone for the last five minutes as best as she can, though her curiosity proves too compelling to dismiss. “Nobody’s hurt” Andrew answers simply, offering no further context as he sits along the same side of the table as his teenage daughter, elbows resting against the wooden tabletop as he stares out at the wintery field that stands across from them.

“Am I in trouble then?” Liv inquires, eyes taking back toward her father, whose preoccupation with the dessert is interrupted by her inquiry, the man’s eyes lowering toward the ground out of uncertainty. “What am I in trouble for!?” the girl soon questions aloud, taking the man’s immediate reaction as an answer to the quandary she’s raised, “is it really so bad that you needed to pull me out of school early and-!?”

“You’re not in trouble, honey” Andrew interjects, redirecting his chin toward his daughter’s direction as he thinks twice of the statement, questioning himself internally before adding emphasis a few moments later, “well, I don’t think you’re in trouble.” Squinting, Liv’s eyes take back toward the open plot of land that sits before their eyes, it’s near mile-long length stretching all the way to the base of a large, wintery mix-covered hillside.

Bowing his head whilst his child’s curiosities run rampant, Andrew concedes a lack of understanding on how to broach the topic that weighs so heavily on his mind, trying to speak in a way that makes sense and alleviates doubt. “Elaine and I couldn’t sleep last night and she went out to use the bathroom around midnight” the girl’s father explains, lowering the ice cream cone from his face whilst he speaks, “she heard you talking in your room and saw the camera.”

Her squint lessening, Liv’s eyes take toward the scenery in the distance for a brief moment before taking to the ground. “Well, I’ve-” she attempts to reply, her efforts proving futile when her father’s voice continues speaking, breaching the air as if his offspring’s explanation were undesired. “Before you explain, or lie about it, or tell the truth, or whatever- I want you to hear me out first” Andrew explains, taking his eyes directly to the girl sat beside him, “we already saw the tapes.”

Evening out the rest of the way, Liv’s squint dissipates in favour of her lids parting slightly further than they usually do, an immediate dread akin to the one that had consumed her the night prior returning to her active conscience. “I’m not mad, you’re not in danger, and I don’t want to make you feel like this is some intervention or whatever you could mistake it as” Andrew continues to clarify, freed to do so now that his daughter’s eagerness to explain vanishes entirely.

“I understand why you wouldn’t want to tell us any of that. I know that- especially after what happened with your sister- it’d be easy to think that I’d react... Well, poorly” the father confesses, speaking with clarity and reason that’s portrayed accurately in his calm and collected inflection. “But I want you to know that you need to tell me these things” Andrew explains, shaking his head as he looks the girl in the eyes, “I cannot be the father that you keep these things from.”

Slightly agape, Liv’s lips remain steady and unmoved, refusing to budge from their frozen places as the words she can potentially offer continue to evade her, leaving her father to continue speaking in their absence. “After everything happened with-” Andrew attempts to explain, falling silent in lieu of a description to the woman whose name refuses to leave his lips for just a brief moment, “- she never told me. If she had told me, maybe I could’ve stopped what happened to the others.”

With his bottom lip quivering, Andrew breaks eye contact with his child and briefly wipes the tear that wells in his eye before setting the flat-bottomed cone on the picnic table. “I want to be able to tell you more than just this, but I can’t right now. There’s just a part of me that can’t bring myself to say any of it just yet” he confesses, struggling to keep his cool, “but what I can say for certain is that- ever since it happened- I’ve kicked myself for not doing something sooner.”

Spouting a heavy breath of fog into the air as he clears his throat, the father falls silent for a few seconds as he sifts through his thoughts, trying to arrange his mind in a way that’ll keep his emotions in check. “I blamed myself for what happened until I shut it all out. I blamed myself for not making it clear to-” Andrew again pauses, struggling to bring himself to utter his disowned offspring’s likeness aloud, “- I should’ve made it clear that she could’ve come to me for anything.”

Again left with tears welling in his eyes, the failure that breeds itself in the father’s mind prompts salty droplets to form in the face of his child, his emotions proving too strong not to share. “If I’d made that clear, there’s nothing that can convince me we’d be living in a different world right now” Andrew admits, his teeth showing themselves through his lips as his self-detestment prevails, “Izzy would still be alive, George and Rebecca wouldn’t have had to see Caden like that.”

Free falling from her lids, tears descend upon Liv’s face as she looks into her father’s eyes, seeing the strife that her troubles have brought upon him, feeling the weight of heartbreak for being the cause of it. “Please don’t take this as me saying you’re going to end up doing the same thing... Please” Andrew hopes aloud, shaking his head with outright refusal, “I know you’re afraid otherwise, but just because you’re going through what you are now doesn’t mean you’ll end up the same way.”

“You don’t know that” Liv whimpers in a soft, near-unheard manner, shaking her own head as her father’s presentation pursues the opposite reaction, bobbing up and down with assurance. “It’s like I said... I can’t tell you everything that I want to right now, but I can promise you that I’m right about this” Andrew retorts, reaching out for his daughter’s hands before taking them into his own, holding them steadily as they lock eyes once more, “it doesn’t mean you’ll end up the same way.”

Squeezing her eyelids tight enough that the tears are forced through whatever space may remain between them, Liv shakes her head with as much opposition to the claim as her father holds certainty in it. “I already ended up the same way” the girl confesses, refusing to buy into the line of hope that the man whose hands hold her own provides, “I lost control with the meds and without them. I laid Coleen out both times... I’m already-”

“One or two slip-ups don’t make you the same monster, Liv” Andrew reassures, watching the girl open her eyes once more, looking him in the face that he holds steady, “it’ll never be easy, it’ll only ever seem easier. You have to be strong, but mistakes don’t make you a monster... Trust me on that.”

Sinking her top teeth into the soft, cold-touched flesh of her bottom lip, Liv stares her father in the eyes without offering a word in response, allowing the plea that he offers to simmer in silence as she considers herself a new line of thought. “What made her a monster?” the girl questions aloud, watching Andrew’s eyes squint ever-so-slightly in reply, reacting instinctively whilst he remains silent in lieu of added context.

“You can’t even say her name. You can’t even call her my sister” Liv responds, shaking her head as it leans close to her left side, “why is she a monster that you left to rot inside a prison cell while I’m just a valiant little champ that needs to just fight harder?” Bowing his head, Andrew lets the question flow through his mind like the surface of water in a cup that leans slightly in one side before tilting back and toward the other, not sure how to answer at first.

“You both have your own kind of demons, Liv” the father explains, mustering enough courage to at least refer to his disowned eldest in distant terms. “I figured that if I had just raised you in a good home, everything would work itself out. I figured that just being there and loving you two would be enough to keep you from giving into those demons” Andrew confesses, putting the blame on his own shoulders as he has since the truth came to light, “...she let hers win.”

Openly weeping as she loses the faintest will she had to not emotionally collapse, Liv falls forward into her father’s arms, which wrap around in an embrace, holding her tight whilst whispering his reassurance as she breaks down against him. “You’ve still got fight in you, Liv” Andrew whimpers, putting aside the truth he considers to be his greatest failure as a father in hope that fate will play out differently this second time around, “you can’t let them win, kid.”

|

> Friday, 3rd December 2038 <

“Come on, Liv! You’re gonna be late for school!” Andrew exclaims, snapping his analog wristwatch into place as he exits his shared bedroom, his upper body covered by nothing more than a tight, black t-shirt. “I overslept! Give me five more minutes!” the teenager calls back, hurrying around her room in only a tank top, a pair of ankle-high black socks and her underwear.

“Just try to get a move on, alright!?” the father calls back, walking toward his daughter’s end of the corridor before making a left turn at the staircase, calling out to the girl along his descent, “I’ve got to be at the shop to get the labourers in for the terrace in half an hour!”

With his palm sliding against the bannister on the side of the steps that faces the living room, Andrew makes his way to ground level and spins around for the kitchen, leaning in to press his lips against his wife’s own whilst taking a ceramic plate from her hand. “Good morning, babe” the man murmurs as he lowers the plate onto the open space of the kitchen’s island where his son sits, picking up the fork that sits beside a heap of scrambled eggs.

“Got any plans while I’m out?” Andrew wonders aloud, fitting as much of the breakfast onto the utensil as he can manage before slowly gliding it toward Galen. “Just housework” Elaine responds, approaching the stovetop with an empty plate in hand before loading it with a small stack of pancakes, a vine of grapes, a side of scrambled eggs and a plastic sauce cup she fills with maple syrup, “why, are you going to be long?”

Passing a glance over his shoulder for a brief moment before the sound of scrambling footsteps overhead ease his concerns, the father continues to feed his son whilst answering the inquiry. “Well, in light of what we saw yesterday morning... I think it might be best that we have someone keeping an eye on Liv while we’re not around to do so” Andrew replies, “I think that- while we’re on a more well-understood line of communication with Liv- now’s the time to get an idea of who she hangs with.”

“If the two of you need anything, just give me a call” the father soon replies to the pair of labourers as he makes for the terrace’s exit, their agreement to the plan affording him the opportunity to leave the shop for them to handle. Journeying back the way he’d initially departed from, Andrew passes a look through the driver’s side window, a set of various red and blue lights reflecting off his windshield as he passes a rather quiet and secluded area.

“Keep moving along!” a uniformed police officer replies, waving his arm in the direction that the street leads toward as he’s relegated to serving as little more than a traffic guard, keeping a line of cars that slowly roll past on the move. One after another, the drivers all stare in wonder at the tarp that covers an unknown object in the centre of a park, its presence seemingly important enough to earn the attention of countless officers, littering the street with dozens of emergency vehicles.

Unlike the other civilians, Andrew’s wonder is left unchallenged and unearned as he drives by, paying no mind to the scene of what he can only imagine is a crime of passion or grizzly violence. “Welcome to Missouri, I suppose?” the man murmurs to himself, aware of the peaceful nature that the surroundings usually hold host to, but still reasonable enough to shake his head at the horrifying deeds mankind constantly proves capable of committing.

With his eyes held forward, Andrew’s focus on the road eventually leads him to a more populated driveway to his daughter’s school than it was when she was dropped off, the few students that still attend classes in person finally making their way to campus. Out of the corner of his eye, Liv’s father catches the figure of someone that immediately resembles a soul he’s passingly familiar with, the spirit of whom the student reminds him of proving to be more of a gut instinct.

“I’m going to take it that you’re Derby?” Andrew wonders aloud, stepping out of his car as the girl’s eyes take toward him, confused at his presence and unable to pinpoint where she would know him from. “Did I key your car or something?” Derby wonders aloud, prompting the man to bow his head with a smirk, trying his best to conceal the genuine humour he takes from her claim.

“No, but I believe you’re friends with my daughter, Liv?” Andrew questions back, watching the student’s hesitant face begin to ease up. “Oh shit! You’re Liv’s dad!” Derby calls out, watching the man’s smile remain intact, though lowering itself just slightly as his daughter’s acquaintance’s is sparked a recollection of passing familiarity.

“I’m sorry, it’s been a while since I saw you on the news” Derby confesses, genuinely apologetic for her immediate reluctance to acknowledge him, “I don’t mean to be an asshole, but you look a little older than you did back then.” Remaining intact, Andrew’s smile persists as he steps forward, presenting his typical demeanour of approachability.

“I don’t take offence. If anything, I’d like to think I look good enough for my age to still seem youthful” the man replies, his admission being one that breaks the ice further, allowing his daughter’s pal to grow more comfortable with his unexpected interaction. “Listen, my daughter thinks very highly of you” Andrew explains, letting the metal ring of his small and simple keychain sit around the middle finger of his right hand, “I want to thank you for being there for her.”

Genuinely appreciative, Derby smiles to herself wide enough to prompt her own bow of the head, trying to conceal the grin that he leaves her with. “Even if she can’t help it like others can, it’s really nice to not have someone look at me like I’m a total failure just waiting to be carried away in handcuffs” the girl confesses, nodding as she fixes the hair that falls from her ponytail, “besides, I don’t like bullies.”

“Yeah, well I guess that makes two of us” Andrew responds, continuing to sport an affable and welcoming smile that his daughter’s friend reciprocates. “Anyway, I’m glad that you brought up Liv’s... uh... challenges” the man confesses, crossing his arms as the bell hooked up to the front of the building goes off to mark the start of class, “I don’t really want to get too into details here, so would you mind if we spoke somewhere else?”

“If you’re asking me to do anything other than go to class today like I hope you are, the answer is ‘yes’ and ‘where’?” Derby jokes, her humour again genuinely amusing the visiting father. “There’s a sub shop at the end of the street the way that I just came down” Andrew suggests, not needing to say anything more before the girl begins walking in the direction, already taking him up on the offer.

|

With the push of a button, Elaine begins the dishwasher’s rinse cycle before walking for the living room, watching her son knock over a tower of stacked play bricks with ample glee. “Come on, Galen! It’s-!” she cheerfully speaks aloud, falling silent when a massive vibration rocks the room that she’d just travelled out of, its presence noticeable enough for the toddler to screech in jubilation over.

With a confused glare, the home’s matriarch stares in the direction of the child-proofed kitchen before the brief vibration begins again, stopping just as quickly as it had the first time around. Finding this odd, Elaine hurries into the room as quickly as she can and immediately reaches for the door to the dishwasher, prepared to open its entry and interrupt its process before the trembling persists for a third time far enough away from the machine to influence her assumption.

At a loss for much else to think, Elaine’s ears take toward her right side, following the third set of buzzes toward a cabinet that she knows isn’t used for much more than the storage of a few wooden spoons. Approaching what she believes to be the source, the mother pulls open the cabinet just as any other as the fourth set of trembling begins again.

“Now honey, why would you leave your watch in the kitchen cabinet?” Elaine wonders aloud as if her husband were home, physically pressing down on the green button that the display presents before speaking. “Hello?” she wonders aloud, pressing her non-dominant hand against the edge of the countertop whilst holding the device with the other, staring through the kitchen’s window as she waits for an answer from the other line.

“This is an automated message to inform you of an incoming call request” a robotic tone of voice begins after three brief seconds, furthering Elaine’s desire to know what the call is about. “Should you agree to accept this call, you will not be charged at any rate for your participation- regardless of the conversation’s duration” the voice proceeds, allowed to continue talking as the attempted discourse’s recipient waits for further clarification.

“Participation in this call is strictly voluntary, and you are not mandated to accept being connected to the caller’s line. If you choose to disregard this phone call, no action will be taken against you” the robot continues, only prompting the woman to roll her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah- get on with it” Elaine whispers, shaking her head with feigned and uninfluential displeasure as she watches a small group of crows fly across the cloudy, midwestern sky.

“You are receiving a requested call from an inmate at Potosi Correctional Center in unincorporated Washington County, Missouri” the robot finally reveals, sparking a widening of the woman’s eyes as her face pulls away from the view of her backyard and into the device’s screen. “No” Elaine mutters beneath her breath as she makes the correlation she’s meant to draw just as it’s spelled out for her.

“The inmate in question is...” the voice follows through, falling silent in lieu of the segment of the call where the prisoner themselves is meant to state their name, allowing for a brief silence to fill the room that surrounds Elaine, who stares into the watch’s screen with a look of awe on her face.

“...Sophia Amari” a tired and seemingly pessimistic young woman’s voice replies, affording the automated machine to resume its participation in the call. “Do you accept this call?” the robot inquires, waiting for a reply that Elaine fails to offer immediately, instead being left with the hairs that rise on the back of her neck and the cold, winter chill that overcomes Missouri just beyond the comfort of her home, which feels strikingly chilly to her in that moment despite the heat blasting.

Parting her lips with no more than silence to offer at first, the woman looks into the device’s screen once more before falling quiet again. “Do you accept this call?” the automated secretary wonders aloud for a second time, refusing to take the hush that it’s met with the first time as a decisive answer. Pulling her opposite hand away from the counter, Elaine pushes the palm of her now-free hand against her forehead as she acts on instinct, allowing her parted lips to serve a purpose.

“Yes” she replies weakly.

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 30 Aug 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e7-you-the-stapler-the-staples-and-the-pieces-of-paper> Tuesday, 30th November 2038 <

“Talk about what?” Liv questions aloud, still presented an unthreatening demeanour, and yet opting to remain hesitant toward getting comfortable in the gentleman’s presence. “An opportunity that I wanted to offer you” Ian answers, his socially uncomfortable presence proving to be somewhat reassuring in the eyes of the woman across from him, though not enough to let his guard down, “I know most people have sorta moved on from everything with your sister, but I’ve got no other ideas.”

Pressing the tips of his fingers together whilst keeping his palms separated, Ian takes toward the ground as his posture straightens itself out, almost as if his intent were to appear more approachable than he normally would be. “I’ve spent the last couple of years putting together one project after another that all fell through. The one time everything went according to plan... the film was a flop” he confesses, eyes taking toward the girl’s direction, “I’m throwing things at the wall here.”

“I don’t understand what you think I’m gonna be able to help you with, but I’m pretty sure you’re barking up the wrong tree” Liv remarks, offering her admission of inability to change the fortunes of the near-stranger across from her, “my sister’s life is more compelling than anything I can offer you.”

“I know. You’re right” Ian responds, confessing to the young woman that her claims- although self-depriving- are true nonetheless, “but that’s why I’ve been staying in semi-frequent contact with her.” Narrowing her eyelids, Liv’s first thoughts prove to be inquiring about the claim that’s been made, but the opportunity to speak never presents itself, instead filled with added emphasis from the director.

“She’s got nothing else to lose. She’s stuck in that prison for almost twenty more years at least. In fact, she’s lucky she was too young for the judge to hand her the death sentence” Ian explains, speaking to the inmate’s sister as if he were offering a sales pitch, his cadence having shifted to a presentation, “people are fascinated by morbidity. Sophie may not be in their collective minds now, but perhaps a chance to look at where the people in the story are now would prove intriguing?”

“Why are you telling this to me then? You’re the one in contact with her, if you needed someone to convince her- you’re the best person for it apparently” Liv replies, shrugging as she stares off into the distance, “who would even want to watch a film about a woman stuck in a cage like that?”

“No one would... That’s why the story isn’t about Sophie” Ian retorts honestly, shaking his head as he changes the direction of the young girl’s mind, “Sophie will have a part in it- yes. However, this film would be about Sophie’s family.” Intensifying, Liv’s squint toward the man carries forward as silence proceeds beyond his pause, allowing the remark to settle within the mind of the teenager.

“Think about it... When people hear about these terrible stories about terrible things done by terrible people, how often do they think about what they leave their families with the burden of?” Ian proposes, raising the question for interpretation now that the initial offer has been provided, “unless their upbringing had something to do with why they did what they did, no one bats an eye. And when it comes to what happens after the travesty, it’s almost like the family never even mattered.”

“So what?” Liv questions aloud, dipping her hands into the pockets at either side of her coat as she shrugs her shoulders, “it’s been seven years and we’ve all moved on from that. My dad got married, he had a new kid, we went on with life. Why bring all of that back up for no good reason?”

“Because you’ll have to one way or another” Ian replies, shaking his head as if scoffing at the inquiry, considering it somewhat humorous. “Whether you like it or not, the history of your family will always be right there in your mind” he points out, pulling his hands away from each other momentarily to point at the girl’s head, “maybe people recognise you for it in the future, maybe Sophie gets released on good behaviour in twenty years, it’ll come back around eventually.”

“Why does that time have to be now?” Liv rebukes, hesitant to offer the man that stands before her any inclination that his proposition is a compelling one, “and if we’re gonna have to dig up those skeletons, why would we want to do it in front of a camera?”

“You don’t necessarily have to” Ian responds, reassuring the young woman that it’s not as cut and dry as a done deal otherwise would be, “but it’d be better to do it in front of the camera than it would be to have constant news articles popping up and bringing Sophie’s name back into the headlines.”

“Oh, so this isn’t so much an offer as much as it is a threat?” Liv questions back, only to watch a vehement dismissal of such a conclusion find its way from the needy film maker. “A threat? No! No, of course not!” Ian quickly refuses, shaking his head whilst taking notice of the displeased visage that the girl across from him wears, “that would be like if I told you to take part in this film at the trouble of exposing the fact that you’ve been lying about your autistic-progress.”

As the corners of her lips arch upwards, the muscles in Liv’s cheeks tighten as she rolls her eyes, nodding to herself whilst staring toward the heavens. “Yep, there it is” the teenager replies, the obviously unpleasant reaction she takes to the quip being one that prompts Ian into pre-damage control.

“All I’m saying is that I think it’d be best if you convinced your mom and dad to say a few things and let me follow them around with a camera for a little while” the man explains, waving his hands toward the girl in a dismissive manner, trying to dissuade her from thinking of his claims as the threat they conceal themselves to be, “it’ll take one, maybe two weeks tops. You’ll all be well-compensated... and your secret will be safe and sound.”

“It doesn’t sound like it’ll ever be safe and sound while you’re around, dude” Liv corrects, leaning her head toward one side with a more well-defined look of disgust. “After I’m done filming this thing, you won’t ever have to hear from me again” Ian assures, hands falling back to his sides as the conversation appears to be nearing its end, “I don’t really want to be in the business of filming documentaries anyway. My passion is film making... proper film making.”

“I don’t give a fuck about what your passion is” Liv responds, her anger made clear and obvious, though her vigour and increasing eagerness to assault the man whilst no witnesses are around to see is concealed excellently. “You should! As a matter of fact, it’s something that should be appreciated!” Ian retorts, turning his body ninety degrees whilst stretching his hand out toward the distant treeline, moving aside to grant the young woman a sight for herself.

“Take this scene for example! The irony of why I chose this place and the symbolism of what it represents!” the man doubles down, trying to carry his claims with the weight of a scholar to the practice. “This is where your sister brought Caden that night after they filmed her in the bunker. This is where the truth finally came out about what happened” Ian proceeds, wearing a prideful grin, “and now, this is where it all comes full-circle. More truths come out... This time with her sister.”

With a slight flare to her nostrils, Liv stares forward with a mostly blank expression, the way it rests making it appear more disdainful than anything else from the eye of the man at her line of sight. “Why choose now to do all of this?” the teenager inquires, brushing off the poetic turn that the filmmaker had ushered her toward the scenery of in favour of searching for something more concrete, “if you’ve been struggling to find a new project, why wait seven years to dig all of this up?”

Looking back to the girl with a meagre letdown in his demeanour, Ian passes a glance toward the distance whilst searching for the answer to a question he hadn’t given much thought to. “Why not, I guess?” the filmmaker replies, repositioning himself opposite the girl once more, “I’m not sure why I held off on it for so long, but I know why I couldn’t just wait forever.”

“You’ve already waited forever... It’s been seven years and we’ve all completely moved on” Liv argues back, refusing the man his open-endedness before finding surprise in his hesitancy to buy into such a fact. “No... I waited a very long time, but I did not wait forever” Ian responds, again using his hands to speak as if giving a presentation, “forever isn’t possible- it’s a concept of time. Everything that happens inside of forever eventually- through some way or manner- dies in forever.”

Squinting with a slight confusion, Liv watches the man pull his hands away and position them at his either side. “Think of it like this... You have a duty to staple two pieces of paper together, alright? You can wait to do that duty forever as long as you ensure just a few things” Ian explains, breaking it down in simple terms, “you can wait forever as long as you, the stapler, the staples, and the pieces of paper are still around. Once one of those goes, it dies and it’s forever is over.”

“That just sounds like another way of saying that you can just finish that task as long as you’re still alive” Liv retorts, unimpressed with the concept she’s presented with, “by that theory, I’ll live forever because forever ends when I die.”

“Exactly the point! That’s why I call it the ‘Tree of Life Theory’, it’s what I use to keep my films orderly” Ian reassures, his smile only continuing to grow the more he’s afforded the chance to speak, “everything’s alive when the tree is alive. But when that tree finally dies, all the life that it supports dies too. No matter what the purpose was or what others had to gain from it being alive, the tree of life dying marks the point in which all of that hope- whatever it was- dies too.”

Though her face remains directed toward the film maker, Liv’s eyes wander into the distance as her anger begins to dissipate, instead turning into an overall sense of dissatisfaction that the man easily notices. “Alright, listen. I get that you probably don’t care to hear any of that, but my point is that it doesn’t matter how long I’ve waited. We can get this doc done and your family will never have to see me again” Ian explains, “I’m just saying that you should really, really think about it.”

Bowing her head, Liv stares at the footprints in the snow that the filmmaker had left upon his arrival prior to her own, letting the man finish his point before attempting to leave. “I’ll let you have all of tomorrow to get your mind right. We can meet at that park with the statue of the dude on that horse a few blocks away from your school Thursday night, alright?” Ian proclaims, offering the young woman as much distance as he can offer to her comfort, “give it some real thought, Olivia.”

“Who told you about my autism?” the girl calls out immediately upon the man’s conclusion, turning around to watch his head face back toward her, stopping from retreating any further than he already has, “tell me the answer- honestly- and I might give it some consideration.” With a pause, the man’s hands remain in his pockets as he stares off into the cold, winter evening with a moral dilemma on his mind.

“You know I’m not supposed to mention-” Ian attempts to reply, trying to offer himself an exemption from the request that the girl will not allow him. “If you’re not supposed to mention names, then let me. If I say the correct name, just turn around and leave without saying anything” Liv responds, providing the filmmaker the next best thing to outright silence before continuing, “was it Coleen? Coleen Wolf? Did she put you up to this?”

Glued to the teenage girl as he remains motionless, Ian stares into her determined face and takes a mental note of the well-hidden, but still partially-noticeable visage of frustration. Having remained slightly apart since his remarks were interrupted, the man’s lips remain pulled from each other as his eyes finally break from the young woman, turning away with the rest of his head.

Uttering not even one syllable, Ian turns the way he’d initially set out to depart toward with his hands in his pockets, resuming his walk toward the vehicle he’d parked along the side of the road. Seething on her own, Liv’s face turns back toward the treeline that the discourse’s second participant had once stood against the backdrop of, her irritation only increasing from what it had been moments prior as angry eyes are taken toward the snow-covered branches.

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

> Wednesday, 1st December 2038 <

In a wooden chair that had usually been left to sit in the sun all day on the side lot that he’s mere days away from converting into an extension of the shop, Andrew sits in silence with nothing more than the snipping sound of his pruning shears being taken to the branches of one of many potted azalea plants at the front of his store. Though they can play music, the various speakers set up around the building and propped up in high corners and shelves sit without power, purposefully shut off.

Though the day is an unusually cold one even as the first day of the year’s final month, the store’s heater is purposefully left off, allowing anything not under the plants that provide warmth and artificial sunlight to the shop’s various flora to remain rather chilly and frigid. Wearing only a red, long sleeve shirt with his business’ branding on the left side of his chest, Andrew bares the bitter elements without much issue, taking little notice of the freezing temperatures that he sits in.

Losing track of time and yet remaining aware of the winter’s bite, Andrew takes pleasure in seeing his breath fog the air that sits around him, paying more mind for his attendance to the plants than the conditions he’s seated in. With countless reasons to believe his life to be cluttered with circumstances otherwise, the store’s owner allows his mind to fall into a state of pleasantry as he continues to whittle away at his duties, still intent on readying his store for the holiday season.

*knock knock knock knock knock*

Beckoned for just a short few feet away, Andrew’s eyes take toward the shop’s front door and the five, consecutive knocks that appear to call out for his answer. Not needing more than a couple of seconds to fail at noticing the face that presses close to his door’s glass exterior, the man returns his sights toward the plant sitting before him. “We’re closed!” the busy gentleman calls back as he guides the shears back toward the yet-to-bloom azalea.

*knock knock knock knock knock*

Disturbed for a second time, Andrew rolls his eyes and presses his lips together before his hands can bring the blades of his clippers down once more. “I’m not serving anybody until the store opens back up in the middle of the month!” the owner quips back, not even bothering to turn his head around toward the unimportant civilian this second time around, “no amount of knocking at my door is going to change that.”

“I’m not here to buy a plant, man” the visitor calls back, realising he can just as easily call out for the store’s owner through the thin glass as he can repeatedly tap at the building’s door. “If you’re from the I.R.S, I already paid my taxes and you’re not seeing another dime until April” Andrew chirps back, unamused at the stranger’s presence and left with little reason to act otherwise, “if you’re anyone else that’s here for anything else, you can just as politely leave.”

Displeased, the citizen on the outside of the shop frowns at the seated father of two before lifting his hand away from his side.

*knock knock knock knock knock*

Frustratedly lowering his shears back toward his lap, Andrew rolls his eyes once more, this time pulling his head back and staring toward the side of his shop with an unpleasant expression. “Sir, I’m a licensed gun owner and my pistol is in a safe around the front counter just a couple dozen feet away-” the building’s lone occupant calls back, again with an unwelcoming, yet steady and calm tone carried toward the visitor’s ear, “- driving me crazy with your knocks does neither of us good.”

“I’m not here for your money or to buy your plants, alright? I’m just a concerned parent trying to talk man-to-man” the civilian proclaims, allowing a pause to linger as the store’s owner goes unresponsive for a moment. Staring forward with a curious gaze, Andrew thinks quietly to himself for a moment before gently discarding the shears onto the storefront’s display window just beside the potted plant, patting himself on the knees as he stands up and walks for the door.

Turning the door’s lock, Andrew parts the entrance’s doors and steps out to join the supposed parent in the frosty embrace of the midwestern December air. “Listen sir, I’ve kept away from the public eye for a while, so I’ll forgive you for not realising this” the long sleeve shirt-wearing shop operator remarks, joining the civilian at street level, “I don’t want to talk about what happened with my oldest. She did what she did, and my family is fractured because of it, and that’s-”

Vehemently shaking his head without speaking at first, the stranger refuses the father any further words through his vocal interjection, finally clearing the air on his purpose for approaching him. “No, no, no- I’m not here about all of that” the visitor explains, wanting to dismiss any such notion prior to pleading his case, “I’m sorry that you had to go through that and all, but- and don’t take this the wrong way- I don’t care about any of that.”

With a faint squint in his eye, Andrew’s attitude shifts just slightly as the conclusion he’d brought himself to is completely dismissed, replaced with something he’s totally unsure of. “Well, what is it that brings you here then?” the wondrous father questions aloud, tucking his hands into his pockets to brace against the cold weather, not necessarily minding the frost, but also not too keen on tackling it head on.

“Forgive me, I’m not really in the loop on how your family tree works and I’d rather not make any assumptions-” the stranger opens, pre-empting himself in the event of misunderstanding, “-but I believe I’m actually referring to your oldest’s sister. I’ve been told her name is ‘Olivia’?” Only deepening, Andrew’s squint accompanies the deeper look of loss that he wears unprevented.

“I’m sorry, are you one of her teachers or something?” the girl’s father inquires, still unaware of who it is that he’s speaking to. “No, I’m actually the parent of one of her classmates” the visitor replies, extending his hand to introduce himself as politely as he can manage, “my name’s Tyler, I’m Coleen’s father.”

Reciprocating the gesture, Andrew shakes the stranger’s hand whilst shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not quite sure who Coleen is” the man explains, his apology a simple masquerade used with the hopes of finding answers to his questions, “I’ll take you at your word about them being classmates, though. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Well, I’m not sure. I’m hoping that you can be of help, but I don’t really know what you can do on your end” Tyler explains, visibly stricken with difficulty on how to approach the topic he visits over, “my ex wife told me that your daughter assaulted mine a few weeks back. I don’t know if she’s done anything about it, but she’s not the kind of woman to really stick her neck out for our kid. I figured I should just come down and try to at least do something since Susana probably hasn’t.”

“Are you and your wife separated or something? You sound like you can’t stand her” Andrew responds, his words carried in a tone as cold as the winter is, though the end of the conversation he provides at least comes across approachable. “Well, she’s my ex wife for a reason. I’d really rather she not have anything to do with Coleen, but unfortunately the court isn’t very favourable toward the fathers in these kinds of things” Tyler explains, making an effort to recorrect course.

“Anyway, I came by to see if there was anything we could do to keep our kids from going at each other’s throats” he continues, putting his best foot forward, “I don’t know if your daughter’s got a mean streak or something, but I know Coleen takes after her mother in many very poor ways. With how less-than-stellar Susana treats her, I wouldn’t be surprised if the apple failed to fall far from the tree.”

“Are you insinuating that your daughter is bullying mine?” Andrew wonders aloud, crossing his arms as he continues trying to figure out the motivation behind the man standing before him. “I’m sure she’s not friendly toward your kid to say the least. From what I’ve heard, your kid’s got some mental deficiencies. I’m not judging, but those are the kids that tend to get picked on the most” Tyler clarifies, “if my Coleen were the ‘bullying type’, I’m sure your daughter wouldn’t be all too safe.”

“It sounds like you have a pretty easy solution on your hands then” Andrew responds, keeping his arms crossed as he begins leaning against the building’s forward-facing facade, “tell your daughter to leave my kid alone and the problem should settle itself.” Gritting his teeth before lowering his head out of the awkward nature that his line of reply presents, Tyler appears hesitant to buy into such a solution outright.

“The only problem about that is the fact that my daughter came back home sporting a bruise she claims your daughter gave her” Tyler corrects, trying to remain as apparently non confrontational as he can appear, “even if it was justified, your daughter hitting back at least shows that both sides are willing to play dirty with each other if the situation calls for it.”

“Sir, my daughter is developmentally challenged. She’s a well-functioning and developmentally challenged young lady, but she is- nonetheless- developmentally challenged” Andrew explains, holding the posture of someone not fully sold on the conversation, “if you’d like, I can show you and your ex wife a variety of notes that doctors and behavioural specialists have taken on my daughter that boil your kid’s claims down to being outright impossible.”

Holding his hands outward toward the store’s owner in a show of civility, Tyler bows his head once more and lets a pause overtake both parents. “Look, I’m not trying to call you a liar or anything. I’m not here to threaten you or play up to this macho image of whatever manly-man the sixties depicted. I’m just here to reason with you” the visitor explains, “my daughter probably pushed your kid to the point of acting on her impulses. I wouldn’t blame her.”

“Sir, I don’t know if you understand what developmentally ch-” Andrew attempts to interrupt, only for Tyler’s composure to make room for a hint that his patience isn’t one to go tested without results. “Sir, my daughter is rather difficult to get along with. She’s testy and rude on many occasions, and I’m sure she’s incredibly difficult for a lot of people to like. I understand that” the stranger explains, defending his offspring with respect, “but one thing she has never been... is a liar.”

Straight-faced and remaining composed, Andrew takes his turn at bowing his head whilst taking a moment to process his fellow-parent’s stance, trying to see the circumstance from the stranger’s point of view. “Look, my daughter’s a great student. She keeps her grades high and is rivalling some of the Asian kids for a shot at being valedictorian” Tyler explains, “all I’m saying is that I don’t want this thing escalating to the point where the school kicks one of them out.”

“Why is that?” Andrew wonders aloud, looking up from the ground at the man’s face, not taking any insult from the quip, but wanting to hear the gentleman finish the thought through. “Because I think we both realise what way the school will swing if it comes down to that” Tyler answers honestly, seeing no point in beating around the bush anymore, “if they’re left with a choice between a developmentally-challenged young lady and a possible Harvard attendee? Who do you think they’ll choose?”

|

Laying on her side and facing the drywall, Elaine tries to fall asleep without luck, finding difficulty in entering a sound slumber in spite of her eyes having been closed for nearly the last hour. “Are you still awake?” the woman inquires, finally parting her eyelids whilst keeping a relatively low voice, staring at the shadows of tree branches that splash along her side of the bedroom.

“Unfortunately, yeah” Andrew responds in a low voice, his back laid out flat against the mattress as he stares toward the ceiling with wide eyes, the left side of his head directed toward the side of the room with the tree-facing window. “Why can’t you sleep?” Elaine wonders aloud, her voice lowering to the point of a whisper as she continues staring forward, waiting a quiet moment for her husband to answer the inquiry.

“My mind’s just too preoccupied to shut down” Andrew responds, looking toward the heavens for another few seconds before turning his face toward the woman beside him, her hair pulled back into the ponytail that sits at his line of sight, “why can’t you sleep?” Holding her stare at the shadow-cascaded wall, Elaine thinks to herself amidst a silent second before replying, offering the best she can manage.

“I’m really not sure” the woman whispers, conceding defeat to fate’s refusal to let her eyes close and be done with the day as she turns onto her opposite side, looking straight into the eyes of her beloved. “I don’t even have a guess as to why. I’m not sick, or hungry, or too energised” she persists, allowing her train of thought to run in search of a valid conclusion, only to come up empty with little more to offer than the gentle sway of her head, “I’m just not falling asleep.”

Pressing his lips together, Andrew lets one of his free hands rest atop the coupled ones that his wife holds together at the edge of her pillow, gently rubbing the back of her hand. “Honestly, other than having sex, I don’t really have any idea on how to help either of us” the man confesses, a reason to find any other solution to the problem at hand having never shown itself to inspire the search for an alternative.

“As flattered as I am, I’m not horny... That feels like it’d be a problem” Elaine confesses, watching her husband’s accepting grin reply to her at first. “Well, it wouldn’t be a problem for me” Andrew jokes, amusing himself whilst his wife’s hands slip away from the reach of his own, playfully swatting at his chest as the pair let out light giggles. “Alright, you perv” the woman replies, slipping out from beneath the covers with a smirk, “you go to work on yourself while I use the bathroom.”

Humoured, Andrew folds his arms behind his head and allows them to act like a headrest as he returns to staring at the ceiling, aware that midnight is almost upon him without much sleep to be had. Wandering toward one end of the corridor she now enters, Elaine’s ear takes to the entirely opposite direction for one moment, the sound of a voice emanating from the other end and catching her ear through the absolute silence that surrounds the walkway.

Without reason not to, Elaine changes course and begins following her curiosities toward the sound of her stepdaughter’s voice, its volume increasing with each new step that she takes. Keeping her footsteps light and slow so as not to disturb her son along the journey or give herself away to the teenager that spends the late hours of the night awake, the woman focuses on the small strip of light that spills out from the bedroom door, which is cracked the slightest bit open.

Eventually reaching her intended destination, the home’s matriarch places her eye against the doorway’s sliver, looking into the pleasant and well-organised room whilst listening into the words that are uttered by its single inhabitant. Unable to see the outline of her stepdaughter, Elaine’s only source of discovery is the standing camera that she’s barely able to catch a decent angle of, spotting out the red light that signals its continued filming.

“We’re heading out, honey!” Andrew calls out from the downstairs once morning arrives, joining his daughter in stepping through the front door before closing it behind themselves. Upon the rather loud closure of the home’s entrance, Elaine steps out from around the corner at the top of the stairs, peering down at ground level with her hands anxiously tapping away upon her hips, almost as if the woman who operates them were nervous about the venture she prepares to embark upon.

Nevertheless, the temporary abandonment of the home by anyone other than herself and her young son allows the mother an opening to seek out real answers to even greater questions than the ones she was left with the night prior. Uninvited, Elaine walks into her stepdaughter’s room and begins a quick search for the item that she’d caught a look at the night prior, reserving her assumptions about its origins and intentions.

Paying respect to the order that Liv has left her belongings in, the stepmother makes a great deal of effort in not making a mess out of her stepdaughter’s belongings, keeping them tidy wherever a glimpse at the camera is not found. Rummaging through the teenage girl’s desk drawers, nightstands, dressers and closet, Elaine’s wandering eyes eventually lead her under the young woman’s bed, a simple flip of the comforter’s bottom earning her a look at a once-hidden cardboard box.

As if surprised to find the item in question, Elaine’s awe arises not from having found the camera in question, but from the realisation of the purpose that it had once served. With a quick flip of the box’s lid, the woman takes a look at the older model of camera and the various tapes that fill the cardboard container’s empty spaces, familiar enough to close the lid and read the name that’s dawned upon the white label atop it in permanent, black marker.

In the same moment as Elaine’s revelation takes place, a buzzing overcomes the kitchen one level below, the drawer that it originates from prompting the entire countertop to vibrate. Its screen reading the generic caller identification of “Missouri”, the watch that had been hidden away and discarded like a bad memory awaits the answer to a call that will not receive one, destined to tremble repeatedly before falling silent, reaching the same machine that it had been met with the day prior.

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 23 Aug 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e6-presented-the-chance-to-face-the-camera> Tuesday, 30th November 2038 <

Pulling her head back whilst standing at the kitchen sink, Liv downs the pill that resides in the palm of her hand before taking back half of a cup of water. “You almost ready, Liv?” Andrew wonders aloud, stepping out of the bathroom on the floor above before calling to his daughter below. “Yeah!” the teenager shouts back, returning the glass to one of the cupboards above, “I’m ready!”

Pulling her hair back into a messy ponytail, the teenager reaches for the knapsack she’d thrown into one of the kitchen’s unoccupied seats before making for the front door, venturing toward the way in which she’s meant to leave with the intention of waiting for her father.

Struck with the bitter chill of the midwestern winter, Liv steps out onto the top-most step of her home’s face in a large, puffy coat before descending the stairs toward her father’s car, climbing into the back seat and settling her bag into the open space beside her.

Having initially entered a mostly-empty building filled with only the school’s staff, Liv takes a seat in the building’s cafeteria and reads the pages of her textbook, using the time at her disposal to familiarise herself with the day’s science lesson. Shared by only three or four other students, the massive wing of the building presents a secluded and peaceful tranquillity for the studying soul to take solace in, losing track of time until her ear can catch the sound of the opening bell.

Holding the hardcover science textbook closely against her chest, Liv’s eyes focus on the patterned floor that she walks whilst music blares into her right ear, spilling out from the wireless earbud and flooding her head. Of no more importance than its use of marking the final day in the month of November, this Tuesday appears to the girl just like any other, the second day in a stretch of five that she’s meant to drudge through in order to reach the weekend.

“Liv, you’re here” the homeroom teacher murmurs beneath her breath after a quick glance at the small group of students that occupy the chairs across from her. Seated near the opposite side of the room whilst passing momentary glances toward her acquaintance, Derby taps her foot along the ground anxiously whilst the teacher carries down the line, not taking long to point her out.

“Deborah, you’re here” the older woman remarks, taking the tip of her pen to the paper that sits atop her clipboard, marking the student as noted. For a few further seconds, the teacher wraps up taking attendance before deeming her efforts to be sufficient enough, stepping away from the podium at the front of the classroom with her job done.

Freed to socialise amongst themselves before the bell rings again to begin the first classes of the day, seven of the eight students in attendance shift from their designated seats and toward their acquaintances elsewhere, with two students specifically exiting the room all together. “Psst, Liv?” Derby whispers, rounding the front of the room to approach the girl, whose head pulls up from the open science textbook.

“We didn’t have science homework last night” Liv quickly replies, attempting to reassure her friend that a quick copy-job of her own work is not necessary. Shaking her head without offering a verbal reply, Derby refuses her pal’s assertion before making for the empty seat just ahead, lowering herself in it whilst continuing to maintain a hushed and reserved demeanour.

Her resting face holding steady and patient, Liv discourages her expression from taking on a manner that can match the uncertainty and intrigue that she conceals within, unsure what her friend’s quiet presentation could imply, though very captivated. Still without speaking a word other than the fellow student’s name, Derby reaches into her back pocket as she sits down and slides free her card wallet from inside.

With the push of her thumb against a small, almost unnoticeable button hidden away within a nook near the top corner of the device, the rebellious ally sends a set of cards shooting upward from their containment within the accessory in ascending order. “I started driving home after I dropped you off last night, but I got hungry along the way and stopped for a taco” Derby explains, picking out a plain, white card with a number written along the face of it.

“This guy stopped me and asked if I knew who you or your dad were. I don’t know who he is, what he wants or how you know him- but he wanted me to give you this” the woman confesses, handing the special needs teenager the contact slip. Looking at it with bafflement, Liv looks at the number before flipping the sturdy piece of solid paper over, finding a complete lack of anything on the rear side of the card aside from the same white, rough material the rest of the piece is made from.

“Did he say anything about who he was or what he wanted?” Liv inquires, looking back to the face of the card whilst asking the question, not recognising the phone number that’s scrawled out. “He only told me to give you that card and have you call him” Derby responds, shaking her head with a slight pout in her lips, “I was caught by surprise. By the time he turned around and walked off, I was too caught up in figuring out what it all was before I could think to ask him anything.”

Continuing to stare intently at the card, Liv searches through her mind for anything that could resemble the contact information on its front to no avail. “Obviously, I just thought you should know” Derby reassures, gesturing her equal confusion with the wave of her hand toward the card, “if it’s anything you need me for, just let me know.”

Looking up to her unruly companion, Liv gives off a half smile and appreciative nod before staring back to the card, continuing to mask her bewilderment whilst trying and failing to think toward who would wish to capture her attention so vehemently.

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

“Remodelling or relocating?” Andrew’s defence attorney inquires, stepping past the small business-owning client, who holds the shop’s door open for him to enter through. “The former” the father of two responds, stepping away from the entrance and allowing it to slowly close itself, “the shop’s a lot busier than it was when I bought it, but the building will still suffice for the time being. I figured all that graffiti being plastered on it gave me a good excuse to get some renovations going.”

“How much longer do you plan on operating out of this place then?” Mr. Webster inquires, passing a look around the plant-filled shop as he wanders further inward, “wouldn’t it be a massive financial undertaking to renovate a building you won’t use for much longer?”

“Well the business has turned a bigger profit annually for the last eight years. There’s more demand, and- especially during the spring- a lot more foot traffic” Andrew responds, crossing his arms whilst following his attorney at the man’s own pace, “the building can handle the patrons for now, but I’m hoping that an entrance to a terrace on the side lot will help alleviate a lot of that congestion. I figure it’ll probably net me at least another few years out of this place.”

“And the money’s worth spending to expand this place instead of going out and renting somewhere bigger?” Henry Webster replies, reaching the centrally-located abundance of fauna that lines the building’s centre-most column before turning back toward his client. “By then, I hope that I’ll actually be able to own the property outright” Andrew responds, presenting his future plans whilst staring toward the empty dirt lot on the building’s street-facing side.

“I figure I can break this thing into two condos or a small apartment unit. Offer the side with the terrace at a higher price than the one with an alley-facing entry” the business’ operator continues, “it shouldn’t cost too much more. Besides, leaving this place behind as one or the other- a condo or an apartment- would pretty much just turn it into a passive income generator. Not the worst problem to have.”

“I suppose not” Webster responds, offering an approving nod toward the future-oriented family man before tucking his hands into his pockets, “and neither would collecting damages for your troubles over the last few weeks, right?” Confused, Andrew squints his eyes toward the defence attorney, whose right eyebrow lifts higher than the left one, leaving the small business owner to draw his own conclusions.

“What do you mean?” the father finally concedes, begging the question he assumes his hired legal assistance is eager to answer. “Well, the word that I’m getting is that the scumbag who’d had you arrested on false pretences has skipped town altogether” Webster responds, shrugging his shoulders before taking his eyes toward the empty plot of dirt off to the building’s side, staring at emptiness as he presents his case.

“Your building was damaged with graffiti as a direct result of the now provably-false claim, and you were forced to temporarily shut down and miss a great deal of business, I would assume?” the defence attorney continues, presenting his case to a now more-privy store owner, “and on top of missing valuable business and being forced to pay your defence attorney, this piece of dogshit falsely put you at the forefront of a race war! Think of how that could’ve sullied your reputation!”

Bowing his head with a grin, Andrew feels the back of his attorney’s hand gently smack him on the chest, physically presenting the amusement of the legal aid in providing a new course of action. “If the guy hadn’t come forward with dashcam footage, think of how badly your business would’ve been affected by his claims!” Webster proclaims, speaking with the tone of someone gleeful to make such a case, feigning the awe that is built into his words, “that smells like a cause to sue for damages, no?”

Reaching for the itch on the back of his head whilst holding back a light chuckle, Andrew ventures toward the shop’s counter whilst gently swaying his head from one side to the other. “I’m sure it reeks of defamation suits at the least...” the satisfied shop owner responds, picking up a damp rag from just nearby the cash register, taking it to the hardwood finish upon finishing his reply, “...but I’m fine with leaving him in my rear view mirror.”

With a look of surprise, the defence attorney removes both hands from his pockets after a few seconds of silence, approaching the store’s owner. “The rat bastard nearly ruined your entire life had it not been for some outright luck” Webster retorts, watching a grin arise over the father’s face, “now you hear that he’s run off and tried to make himself disappear, and you’re just fine with that? You’re just fine with letting him go off and maybe try and kidnap someone else’s kid?”

“I don’t think he’s gonna go after someone else’s kid” Andrew responds, continuing to shake his head in refusal as he exchanges the damp cloth out in favour of a dry one. “How can you know that for sure?” Webster replies, challenging the father to consider how little the human waste of air had cared to make his initial attempt in broad daylight, “how can you stand there and tell me you don’t think he’ll try and do the same to someone else?”

“Because I’m pretty sure he’s learned his lesson, Henry” Andrew reassures, nodding to the defence attorney before taking the unsullied rag to the faux hardwood finish. “Now you’re having a laugh at this” Webster responds, hands held at his sides as his head leans toward his left shoulder whilst nodding, “I’m sure you’re not stupid enough to think people like that learn lessons. One man being braver than others to step in and get involved won’t teach him anything.”

“You’d be surprised at how persuasive I am when I’m angry” Andrew replies, amused at the conversation that he partakes in, “you should’ve seen his face before those market workers spilled out into the parking lot.”

“I’m sure you’re not someone to get on the bad side of, Andrew. With that said, I don’t think your anger is enough to completely rehabilitate a vicious piece of trash like that young man” Webster doubles down, stopping as the second soul in the discourse looks up from his duties, swinging the dry rag over his shoulder and letting it sit there.

“I’m telling you now that- as far as I’m concerned- he’s not an issue anymore” Andrew replies, pressing the palms of both hands firmly into the countertop, “whatever he does from now on... only god knows. But, as far as my family and I are concerned, everything about him is best left behind us now.”

“Andrew, you-” the defence attorney interjects, attempting to persuade the family-loving gentleman before him without success, thwarted by the interruption of the father’s voice. “Henry, I’m sure you’d love me to go along with you and file this suit. I’m sure you’d be over the moon to have some big, blockbuster defamation case to win and make headlines over” Andrew explains, shaking his head with refusal, “but if I’ve learned anything from the legal system, it’s to get things done quick.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean” Henry concedes, frowning as he nods toward the man he accepts is incapable of being swayed. “I’m sure you do. I don’t need to worry about that scumbag anymore than I already have, and I’m not going to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a payout that I don’t need and- quite frankly- I don’t want” Andrew concludes, tapping his palm against the counter twice before walking around the way he’d initially journeyed, “thanks for the offer, but no thank you.”

|

Overhearing the tone of various teachers speaking to their classes in the rooms that she passes along her journey, Liv wanders through her high school’s halls alone, keeping an eye out for the trio of troublemakers that pose her concern whilst her mind pays its attention to more pressing matters. Minding her own business whilst keeping her eyes and ears away from conversations they’re not meant to join into, the curious student strolls her way toward private corners of the spacious building.

Though aware of a few spaces where privacy would be a near guarantee, the travelling junior aims for something more assuring, disobeying the typical routes and most-frequented pockets of the school that she’s more familiar with in favour of the seclusion that other sides tempt to provide. For almost three minutes, the girl’s legs continue to carry her forward without certainty over where their efforts will lead her, the only hope being that her following actions are witnessed by no one.

Just as her stomach begins to dance as if her intestines were trying to not themselves, the natural sensation of uneasiness with venturing beyond her comfort zone leads Liv into an oddly well-lit stretch of hallway adorned with doors on either side, all closed shut and seemingly ignored for the most part. Squinting her eyes, the wandering learner takes her attention to a set of double doors at the corridor’s end, painted the same shade of semi-light blue as every other entrance along the way.

Refusing to hesitate in moving forward, Liv advances upon the very end of the hallway, stretching her hand out for the latch-like entrance that awaits her, pushing the switch inward with her thumb to free the passage for entry. Immediately struck with lights of equally bright luminosity as the ones that had flushed the gangway behind her, the student shields her face as the spacious, dark room becomes freed for her to look into, the obstruction of nothingness a factor no more.

Briefly pacing around the room, Liv tries to familiarise herself with the way in which the room has been set up, a variety of objects- all shaped in different ways- covered in tarps and stored away for long enough to at least gather a hefty layer of dust. After a few seconds, the knots in the student’s stomach begin to metaphorically unwind themselves, easing herself into a strange sense of comfort that’s at least operable enough to follow through with her original intentions.

Retrieving the blank-faced card from within her pocket, Liv presents her commands to the smart watch on her wrist and speaks the number aloud, beginning to feel the knots in her stomach wind themselves up once more as she holds off on following through with her order. Glancing back down at the identical number on her watch’s screen to what’s written on the card she was handed earlier in the day, the student lets the brief pause inflict its will upon her as great discomfort.

“Place call” she soon doubles down, fighting past the urges to backtrack her way into writing off the card as something of little to no importance, needing to know who- or what- yearns for her acknowledgement so badly. For a few seconds, all that Liv’s nerves are left with are the sounds of ringing, her attempt at reaching the other line left in the hands of the soul that searches out for her dial.

“We’re sorry, but the person you are trying to reach is unavailable” the answering machine recites after a few further moments, refusing the teenager any answers for the questions that lay eager on her mind. Rolling her eyes and dropping her hands in frustration, Liv stares toward the ceiling before violently shaking her wrist through the air, ending the call upon her gesture and returning her to the silence that the odd room’s seclusion provides her with.

“Who the fuck would you be?” she mutters to herself, asking the question aloud that receives as little of a valid option as is given when the inquiry is kept in her head. Frustrated and even more anxious than she was mere seconds ago, Liv’s feet begin to carry themselves toward the way in which she’d entered, wanting to remove herself from this wing of the building as quickly as she’d discovered it before her attention is stolen by the mysterious stranger once more.

“One new message” the young woman’s wrist watch proclaims, re-earning the girl’s full focus as her attempted departure is thwarted. As if the time she’d spent years waiting for a replying call as opposed to a few seconds, Liv lifts the device to her lips and hastily demands that it read the return comment aloud.

“There’s a field four and a half miles away from your home address. That’s where the specific address that’s attached to this message will lead you” the written text reads, provided with a strangely-robotic human tone of voice, the words spoken to the best of the watch’s abilities, “meet me there tonight and come alone. I don’t wanna have to out you as a liar because you don’t show up when asked.”

|

“Is anyone home!?” Andrew calls out as he steps through the front door, two paper bags filled with groceries under each arm. “Yeah, but I’m just about to head out with Derby!” Liv calls out from the second level of the home, dressing herself in the comfort of her own bedroom whilst her father carries himself toward the kitchen.

“Your mother’s van isn’t in the driveway, so I figured either you’d be here or you’d all be off somewhere getting dinner or something!” Andrew retorts, shouting louder than he’s used to when in the confines of his own home, forced to do so in order for his words to meet his daughter’s ears.

“Mom and Galen left two hours ago!” Liv shouts back, using the lamp on her nightstand to ensure she doesn’t put on her pants backward, unable to count on the sunlight that dipped below a few, short hours ago. Keeping his thoughts to himself for the moment, the only man to call the building home waits for his daughter to finish assessing her wardrobe to prevent from yelling any further than he already had, preferring to wait the next two minutes out by putting away the newly-purchased produce.

“Did she tell you where she was going?” Andrew wonders aloud, finally overhearing the footsteps that his daughter carries herself down the main staircase with. “No, but they were dressed like they were going out for dinner” Liv replies, leaning her head toward one side as she fits an earring through the hole in her lobe, “why, did you have some fancy dinner planned for her?”

“No, I made a quick trip out for milk that turned into more than I’d bargained for” the father replies, stuffing a head of romaine lettuce atop a pair of pickle jars on the refrigerator’s middle-most shelf, “when you reach my age, you’ll quickly find out how impossible it is to leave the mart with only what you went there for. You’ll walk in looking for bread and leave with eighteen other things.”

“It sounds like there are worse problems to have” Liv replies, her joke amusing the man that puts away the various goods with surprising efficiency. “There sure are, kid” Andrew retorts, finally emptying the first paper bag before discarding it into the corner of the room, leaning back as he remains knelt upon one knee as his eyes find his offspring, “where are you and Derby headed off to?”

“I’m not sure. We’re meeting up with two other girls from our class at their place. They’re doing a hangout at the firepit in their backyard and Derby invited me” Liv responds, lying through her teeth, but doing so incredibly convincingly. “This girl, Derby, does she know about you not being- uh- as hampered by your condition as before?” Andrew wonders aloud, pressing his forearm against the fridge as he looks toward his daughter with curiosity.

“No, but she’s always been pretty dependable. She’s pretty much the only person that’s not called me a retard” Liv responds, finally fitting her earring into place, “she’s a little misunderstood, but so is everyone. I trust her more than anyone else I go to school with.” Left with little choice but to nod with hopeful acceptance, Andrew pays his daughter the benefit of the doubt and juts his head toward the door.

“You’ll have to introduce me to her one day” Andrew replies, gesturing for the home’s exit with a gradually-building trust in his daughter to make good use of the faith he’s leaving at her hand, “now go on and enjoy yourself, kid.” Smiling toward her father, Liv leans toward the ground and kisses the man on the cheek before turning away, walking for the front door as a buzzing overcomes her father’s wrist.

Waiting until his offspring has fully stepped through the door, Andrew lifts his wrist toward his mouth and parts his lips. “Answer call” the man mutters aloud, letting dominant hand rejoin the other in attending to the bagged groceries he’s yet to put away. “This is an automated message to inform you of an incoming call request” a robotic tone of voice begins after three brief seconds.

Not having read the caller’s identification when it’d popped onto his device’s screen, the unexpected, machine-like tone taken on the other end of the line draws the recipient’s full attention. “Should you agree to accept this call, you will not be charged at any rate for your participation- regardless of the conversation’s duration” the voice proceeds, capturing Andrew’s unrivalled sights as he stares into the small screen, only met with a blue screen and a set of white numbers ticking upward.

“Participation in this call is strictly voluntary, and you are not mandated to accept being connected to the caller’s line. If you choose to disregard this phone call, no action will be taken against you” the robot continues, its continued speech only pleasing Andrew less as it hesitates to get on with its reason for calling.

“You are receiving a requested call from an inmate at Potosi Correctional Center in unincorporated Washington County, Missouri” the robot finally reveals, the proclamation being one that instantly heightens Andrew’s instincts, carrying his eyes to the device’s screen as the automated voice on the other end of the line attempts to continue, “the inmate in question-”

Before being afforded the opportunity to continue any further, the robotic tone’s voice falls silent as the father punches the air with great force, the shaking gesture prompting the call to end right then and there. With wide eyes, Andrew stares at the distance of the room, drawing his own conclusions as to the phone call’s origins before acting on his impulses alone, struggling for a brief moment to rip the watch free from his wrist before discarding it into a random kitchen drawer.

As if his life were threatened just through being within the vicinity of the device, Andrew walks away from the kitchen with his hands pressing against either side of his head. Breathing heavily, the man paces toward the entrance to the kitchen before spinning around and walking the opposite way, stepping in circles as he tries to wipe his memory of the near-encounter with his past as best as he can allow himself to.

|

“Thank you” Liv remarks, passing her driver an appreciative greeting before departing his backseat, closing the door politely before watching the vehicle she’d arrived in gradually make its way back onto the main road. Cloudy and impossible to ignore, the teenage girl’s breath fogs the air that stands before her as she turns toward the wide, open field her destination was set to, staring out at a set of trees before taking notice of one figure in the near distance.

Pressing her lips together as the same knots in her stomach from earlier in the day return, Liv lets a heavy, expansive cloud of breath leave through her nose as she steps forward, her boots crunching down on the soft layer of snow that shields the dirt field from the bitter chill of the elements. With hands carried at her sides, the girl approaches her meeting’s request-maker with caution, aware of the dangers that may be posed as she keeps her guard raised.

Though it nears closer with each passing step, the figure of the single man in a large, empty field appears no more discernible from any other. Aside from the buzzcut that her apparent host wears and the burgundy-coloured trench coat that he dawns, the man that had gone through greater lengths to receive her attention than necessary finally becomes the focus of Liv’s eyes, her increasingly-loud footsteps prompting the man to turn around with his hands raised in a show of good faith.

“Don’t worry, I’m unarmed” the nerdy-looking citizen calmly remarks, trying his best to present a friendly smile upon his face, which wears a bulky pair of round corner-shaped box-like eyeglasses. Finally given the chance to look the man in the eyes, Liv finds herself surprised at whom she sees standing before her, his inability to stand out from the plethora of faces she’s come to know in life striking her as odd.

“Do I know you?” the girl wonders aloud, squinting investigatively at the man that calls her to the middle of nowhere for what seems like little more than a chat. “You certainly do, but it wouldn’t surprise me if you didn’t remember who I was” the man replies in a somewhat strangely welcoming manner, his tone of voice much friendlier and warm than the scenery he’d chosen to meet in, “you weren’t little-little when I was around, but you were young enough that my face probably doesn’t ring bells.”

Pulling her head back with as little clarity as she’d entered the conversation, Liv tucks her hands into her pockets and shrugs forward, leaning her chin forward as if to gesture that she’s waiting for context. “Uh, I’m Ian. I worked with your sister on her documentary before she got arrested” the man confesses, reintroducing himself to a girl much more capable of remembering him now than she was then, “does that help any?”

Looking to the ground for a moment as she searches through her mind for anything worthy of being remembered, only one snippet of importance prevails above all else. “Weren’t you the guy that hired the cop to follow my sister?” Liv questions aloud, standing upright once more as the man across from her nods approvingly. “Yes, that- uh... that was me” Ian replies, obviously not taking much pride in the fact of the matter, “it’s a- uh... kind of a shame what happened to him.”

Lowering his head to give himself a better angle to scratch the itch on the back of his neck, Ian turns the conversation around to more fruitful avenues, eyeing something of greater importance. “Anyway, yeah. I sort of figured something was sketchy about your sister’s story and wanted him to do some digging. It’s not like I hoped she was a blood-thirsty killer or anything, I just wanted a deep angle for the documentary” he confesses, dismissing any wrong-doing of his own in spirit.

“Anyway, I got a lot more out of that documentary than I was planning to. Your father doesn’t like me very much, so I had to go about other ways of getting in contact with you” Ian explains, pleading his case to the girl that stands before him, her height the same as the subject of his film years prior was, “it’s been a few years and the calls just keep coming in for more.”

“More?” Liv repeats, a slight narrowing of her eyes preceding her gentle shake of the head, “more what?” Spreading wider than the feigned and slightly unnerving grin he’d met her the first time around, Ian’s smile answers the young woman without words at first, the vocal reply taking a moment to accompany the shift in his demeanour. “That’s why I wanted to meet with you in person” he replies, shrugging his loose and limp shoulders amidst a pause, “that’s the only real way to talk about this.”

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 16 Aug 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e5-as-the-truth-spills-out> Tuesday, 23rd November 2038 <

With his eyes open and stoic, Andrew’s lips press against the knuckles on his hands, palms pressed together and elbows spaced apart from each other, resting on the kitchen’s island. Without uttering a word, the man’s face keeps itself steady and unwavering, the muscles within it eased and unexpressive. Distant and having become partially uncertain of what’s being said around him, the father of two’s mind feels empty and weightless, as if not bothered by a thought, nor concern.

Though the air outside is cold at the touch of the Missouri winter, the temperature of the room can only feel even colder to the skin of the family’s patriarch, whose distant eyes hold firm upon the young woman that sits across the table from him. His own not leaving the eyes of his daughter, Andrew stares without much in the way of an expression before he’s pulled back into the conversation, brought free from the chilling seclusion he’d built himself into at the touch of his wife’s warm hand.

“Andrew?” Elaine whispers, looking at the countertop as her husband’s face turns toward her own, snapping back into reality before quickly attempting to clear his throat. “Why, um...” the man begins to ask, falling short of getting the question off before looking down once more, hands forcing themselves apart to rub at the sides of his head, “...why keep this as a secret from us?”

With hands that desperately wish to shake despite her refusal to let them, Liv parts her lips slightly whilst looking at her father, his eyes squinting as he leans forward, arms pressed against the table to support himself. “I- I didn’t, uh-” the teenager stammers, equally as hard-pressed to get her words off without the fear of anxiety-induced interruptions.

Unlike her father, Liv’s attempt at responding is interrupted by intentional silence, her unsuredness over what to reply with proving too great to come up with an answer on the spot. “What, did you want us to make you feel special or something? What was-?” Andrew questions, looking around the room as he speaks, struggling to find sense in the young woman’s reasoning, “was it that you- was- just why? Why keep this from us?”

“I don’t know!” Liv quickly blurts out, finding herself on the verge of tears at the struggle that her father finds in presenting solutions, offering her one response after another- all refused. “You guys had just had the baby, and you wanted to expand the plant shop, and everything was just so confusing with the court dates and the lawsuits, and it all just-!” she hurriedly persists, eventually surrendering to her lack of a valid retort by placing her head in her hands, “-it was all too much!”

Hurrying out of her chair and toward her step daughter’s side of the table, Elaine rests her hand on the girl’s shoulder and leans close to her, pulling her in for a reassuring hug whilst her husband processes the information across the table. “Honey, I’m not- fuck!- I’m not mad at you or stuff like that, I’m just trying to understand why!” Andrew remarks, trying to dissuade his daughter from thinking otherwise, “this is fantastic, don’t get me wrong- I just don’t know how to make sense of it!”

“Neither do I!” Liv exclaims back, running her hand over her tied-back hair whilst failing to hold back her tears, “I just didn’t want to spring such a change on you guys once Galen was born, and then everything started changing, and I needed you to keep getting the pills, and I just didn’t know how to cope!”

Confused at the emotional welling of her step daughter, Elaine tries to offer comfort through her embrace, though her eyes take back toward her husband with the shake of her head. “What do you mean everything changed? What’s with the pills? I don’t understand what that means, honey” Andrew continues, leaving his chair and slowly approaching the side of the young woman that his wife doesn’t already occupy, “I’m over the moon, but I’m just trying to make this make sense!”

Hyperventilating, Liv gently pulls a few inches away from Elaine and tries to clear her thoughts, closing off the world from her line of sight for a moment as she presses her palms against her eyes. Resting his hand against the countertop for support, Andrew pauses for a moment to allow his daughter a chance to process her thoughts, looking toward his equally-confused wife for clarity that she can’t offer anymore than he can.

“The pills make time go a little slower. They- they help me figure it all out, before anything bad happens” Liv stammers, rubbing at the tears that surround her eyes, desperately wishing to fall down her soft, youthful skin. “I get mad sometimes and they help me take a second to breathe and keep the bad ideas in my head” she furthers, drawing the slight amount of concern that her parents take further outward the longer she speaks, “I don’t want to risk doing bad things again.”

“Bad th- what bad things?” Andrew inquires, resting his hand on his daughter’s shoulder whilst watching her stare off into the distance, struggling to find the words to respond with as the gravity of her confession settles its weight upon her. “What bad things?” the man asks again, doubling down on the inquiry before leaning into his offspring, using his free hand to guide her face toward his own, “what bad things are you talking about, Liv? What’s wrong here?”

Stricken with pains in her stomach worse than the ones felt when starved, Liv leans back in her seat and tries to regain her composure, staring into her father’s eyes with a guilt-ridden face. “I attacked one of my classmates” the girl replies, sinking her top row of teeth into the soft bit of her bottom lip, “I followed her into the bathroom, I hit her and I left when she fell on the ground.”

Pulling his head back, Andrew shakes his face from one side to the other briefly, letting the admission sit with him for a moment before squinting. “Why?” he asks in a breath-like tone, failing to understand the motivations that would drive his child to do such a thing. “Because she’s a bully! She picks on me all the time!” Liv proclaims, offering the best reason she can provide, “it was that one week where you had a problem getting me my meds! I just didn’t-”

Pausing again, the secret-spilling young woman presses her hand against her head and centres her mind once more, trying to regain her composure. “When I went without the meds, everything felt like it was moving quicker. The pills helped slow things down and gave me another second or two to just think” she confesses, fingers tightening into fists to relieve the tension.

“Why would you need things to slow down?” Andrew retorts, kneeling to the ground after the third time his daughter’s face distances itself toward the corner of the room, “why not tell us this sooner?”

“Because the other med the doctors wanted you to try didn’t give me that extra second!” Liv hurriedly quips, defending her stance before falling silent at the sight of her father’s palm, his presentation of it signalling for the young girl to pause. “Listen, listen... I’m just going to forget the bit about you attacking that girl for a second, alright?” Andrew questions aloud, trying to redirect the conversation to his original question, only to be met with his daughter’s reluctance.

“No, that attack is why I need the meds. When I get angry, the meds give me a second to stop and not do the thing I want to do” Liv quickly interjects, refusing her father his intended recourse, “I worried that- if I told you- you’d think I was just-” Again falling short of finishing her sentence, the teenager closes her eyes and leans her head against the back of her chair, the pause greatly intriguing Andrew, whose become too invested in hearing her reasoning to leave it unattended.

“I worried you’d think I was just like S-” Liv responds, her hush-like voice thwarted from capping off its point by the refusal her father shows her. “Don’t say her name” Andrew interrupts, squeezing his eyelids shut and bowing his head as he winces, presenting an excruciating visage as if the pain were physical.

Staring at her father, the tear-wearing daughter goes quiet for a moment as she looks into the man’s face, struggling to read anything more than the disdain she knows he already has for her older sister. “Am I?” she asks, watching the man look back up at her amidst the change in pace their conversation had taken, her stepmother standing by and watching the discourse continue, “am I her?”

With widened eyes and a horror-afflicted face, Andrew quickly thinks to shake his head in refusal, rummaging through his brain in an effort of finding matching words to utter. “Never in a million years will I ever let you end up like that girl” the man refuses, vehement in his declaration as he takes his daughter by the hands, coupling them within his own, “that will never, never be you.”

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

> Monday, 29th November 2038 <

Though her bruise is clearly beginning to fade as her face heals from the assault she’d sustained, the rapscallion ways that had partially been responsible for Derby’s earning of the battlescars prove to remain intact. “Liv!” the student calls out, wearing an all black sweatshirt with a pop punk band’s wordmark written across the front of it in gold lettering, hurrying around the corner with glee at the first sight of her friend.

“Do you have the homework from last night!?” the girl calls out as she races down the hallway, closing the distance between herself and her friend. Without uttering a word, Liv pulls away from her locker and hands her teenage acquaintance a blue-coloured folder, its glossy exterior immediately meeting the fingertips of the student whose effort is purposefully poor.

Nodding to herself, Derby lowers herself to the ground and opens the small notebook that she’d hurried from her own locker with, quickly taking the tip of her pencil toward the white pages. “You didn’t do your homework?” Liv asks, her tone slightly automated in an effort of keeping up her ruse, a question that’s immediately laughed at by the girl that stations herself on the floor beside her.

“I’ll get arrested in four years for getting drunk in a public park and pissing on a cop car, what makes you think I’d do my homework?” Derby jokes, continuing to jot down the answers that her friend had taken the time to figure out, purposefully getting a handful of them wrong along the way. “Why won’t you go to college?” Liv questions aloud, the inquiry one that her pal takes as much humour in as the one that it had followed.

“Who says I wouldn’t go to college? Hell, that’d probably be why I got drunk and pissed on a cop car” Derby responds, moving her graphite tip across the paper with great speed, “besides, I’d flunk out after my first semester. Maybe my second semester tops.” Displeased with that conclusion, Liv finds no real alternative proposition to offer, instead allowing herself to fall silent and patiently wait for the student to finish her obvious thievery of work.

“The questions of the day are on the board- you can get started on them after you pass in your homework” the masculine teacher speaks aloud as he departs from the front of the room, making back for his desk. Stepping out of her chair, Liv carries her paper in both hands before taking a momentary glance at the girl that sits beside her, noticing that- whilst she’d copied down her homework almost five minutes ago- her friend refuses to leave her desk.

“Aren’t you going to hand in your homework?” Liv whispers, catching the girl’s attention away from the assortment of school materials that she stacks atop her still-closed notebook. With a raised eyebrow, Derby considers her friend’s question for a moment before shrugging, a brief shake of her head and outward-extended bottom lip dismissing the proposition as unimportant to her in the moment.

Reading the visual language shared, Liv turns away from her pal and approaches the front of the room, skating past a handful of students that travel in the opposite direction in an effort of returning to her desk on her way toward the front of the aisle. Keeping her eyes toward the ground, the instruction-following student holds the loose sheet of paper close to her chest before being forced to brace, shielding herself as she topples over and into the ground.

“Oh, shit!” three or four students exclaim, raising their obscenities whilst the other students keep to themselves, having seen the special needs student descend toward the ground from their various sides of the room. “Oh, shoot! I’m so sorry!” a familiar and eye-roll inducing voice blurts out, immediately firing out of her chair and rushing to the assistance of the girl that her foot had sent flying into the tiled floor, “are you alright!?”

Gritting her teeth and concealing her face as best as she can, Liv soon presses her lips together and bows her head, lifting her right arm from the ground as a tingling pain shoots from her elbow and toward her wrist. “Are you alright, Olivia?” Mr. Calhoun asks, immediately stepping out of his seat to watch the girl responsible for the event kneel toward the ground in the name of offering assistance.

“She’s fine! Probably just a little bruised!’ Coleen hurriedly exclaims, reaching her hand out for the fallen student to take for support with a less-than-apologetic expression worn. “I was sliding into my desk quicker than usual and my foot went further out than I was hoping for!” the blonde bully continues, offering a reasonable explanation whilst her outstretched palm remains unmet by either set of five fingers that her target wields, “it was an honest mistake.”

Letting out a deep breath, Liv refuses the help of her adversary and pushes herself off the ground instead, reclaiming her loose sheet of paper and turning away. Extending her hand toward the maths teacher’s desk, the assaulted student drops off her assignment and turns away, taking a brief look toward the man whose class her fall had interrupted on the way.

Though Liv had been the one affected by the unassuming altercation, Mr. Calhoun’s eyes settle upon the girl who stands at the front of her desk, a slight judgement carried behind her visage. Somewhat surprised by the focus that she receives in spite of her attempted admission of fault, Coleen’s personable visage falls into a slightly-noticeable face of bewilderment, genuinely shocked that the teacher doesn’t seem to think highly of her apologetic facade.

Returning to her desk, Liv turns toward her seat and carries a similar glance in the direction of her academically-inferior acquaintance before returning to the comfort of her seat. Keeping her thoughts held internally, Derby stares daggers toward Coleen’s end of the rows of desks, the palms of her hands pressing into the surface of her own hardwood tabletop with enough force to define the tendons that stretch along the back of her hands.

Gestured to leave the classroom at the sound of the school bell, the students disperse through the pair of doors at either end of the classroom, spilling out into the hallway to continue about their day. Pressing her belongings closely into her chest, Liv begins following the jacket-wearing student that occupies the seat ahead of her until she makes it to the front of the room, her inner elbow taken into the possession of her friend.

“No, no, no... We’re going through the other door” Derby remarks, a slight hint of malicious intent carried through the tone of her voice as she walks alongside her special needs acquaintance, guiding her in the opposite direction that she’d originally ventured. Through the door that the underperforming student had set her sights upon, the pair of friends- though at the behest of the one whose arm holds the other closeby- make their way around a few sets of corridors with a destination in mind.

“Coleen!” Derby calls out, catching the merest glimpse of the young woman’s blonde strands of hair between the heads of her two close friends, the sight proving more than enough for her to belt out the girl’s name. Stopping in the middle of the hallway, the trio of students spin around and attend to the calling out of their presence, watching with varied smirks as the pair of foes draw closer.

“If you’re thinking about trying your hand at shoving me back now that there’s not a teacher around to send you off, I’d take a look in the mirror at the bruise we left you” Coleen remarks, speaking on behalf of her group with a grin, “at least what we left you last time is starting to heal.”

“You think that’s gonna stop me?” Derby questions, letting go of Liv’s arm as she gets closer to the blonde bully’s face, the subject of her aggravations remaining closely at the sides of her reinforcement-offering friends. “If you had any brains, it would” Coleen responds, not backing down from the confrontational front that her adversary presents to her.

“I’m not afraid of a couple bruises, Barbie. I’ll take fifty punches from your dumb little soldiers over here just to break one of your teeth” Derby retorts, standing her ground whilst maintaining the close proximity between herself and her disliked fellow student, “I’ve already told you once and now I’ll say it again- if you’ve got a problem with Liv, you’ve got a problem with me.”

“Oh, I’ve got a problem with Liv alright” Coleen replies, her teeth presenting themselves through her parted, glossy lips, “as a matter of fact, Liv knows I have a problem with her.” Having refocused her sights upon the special needs student, the bully’s line of sight is reclaimed by the unrelenting student that stands before her, having not moved an inch since getting in the teenager’s face.

“Then I guarantee that the warehouse won’t be the only time you put your hands on me” Derby retaliates, inching closer to her adversary’s face in spite of the combined efforts of Leila and Elva to shove the rebellious teenager away, “I hope the next time we fight, you go into it thinking I’m as easy of a fight as what you got then.”

“Considering how stupid you are, I think you’re a lot easier to fight than you think you are” Coleen rebukes, a conclusion that only sparks a smile on her confrontational foe’s visage. “You better leave Liv alone, got it?” Derby dares, shoving Elva’s hand away as she steps back, allowing for the distance that the blonde girl’s pals set to re-establish.

“Don’t worry- I don’t think she’ll be bothering me any time soon...” Coleen responds, stepping back with her henchwomen following suit, eyes taking toward the direction of her reluctant and purposefully self-guarded teenager as she does so, “...will you, Liv?”

Unsure of what to make of the question, Liv stands by with a curious glint in her eyes as the threesome of girls turn away and resume their stroll toward their initial destination. Remaining quiet, the subject of the now-concluded conversation keeps to herself as Derby ventures back toward her, dismissing the inquiry that had been raised by their shared-adversary in the name of keeping to her friend’s side.

|

“Two prescriptions this time, sir?” a man in a long, white coat wonders aloud, approaching the blue countertop with a set of paper bags in hand, lengthy plastic-coated sheets of paper stapled onto both of them. “Yes, two prescriptions” Andrew responds, watching the pharmacist tap his fingers along a nearby screen before reaching for a small, soft-topped device that’s plugged into it.

Leaning forward, the father presses his right index finger against the handheld device and keeps it steady for a few seconds, waiting for the cheerful ring on the pharmacist's machine to inevitably reach for his ears. “Alright, Mr. Carrion... you are all set!” the man politely quips, passing the man a half-smile alongside the set of bags that now reach the family man’s possession, carried through the doors of the supermarket the medical bay is built into and out to his vehicle.

With the closing of his door, Andrew quarters himself off from the public, and by extension- the noise of traffic that lines the street just beyond the asphalt-paved curb that separates the parking lot from the main road. Drowning out the world beyond his vehicle’s shell, the father of two holds the bags against his chest and stares forward with a blank expression, eying a local restaurant, a line of trees and a few cars parked various spaces apart from one another- all unimportant.

Sitting with himself and the quietude that surrounds him for a few seconds, the father eventually sets the pair of prescriptions on the passenger’s seat beside him, starting his car and driving off at more peace of mind than he was prior to entering. After roughly ten minutes, Andrew powers the engine down and leaves his vehicle parked in the alley behind his storefront, departing the vehicle empty-handed before entering the building.

“My apologies for leaving you waiting- your appointment just completely slipped my mind” the man apologises, opening the front door to allow a pair of contracted men into his shop. “Well a few minutes never hurt anyone I suppose” the first man replies, his face bearing the stubble of a five o’clock shadow, his heavy set colleague’s clean-shaven face following him inward.

“And you want the terrace built here?” the larger fellow replies, standing a few feet further out from his partner and the man presenting him with the open space. “Yeah, I laid stones at either end. That’s how long I want it to be” Andrew replies, pointing in the direction of the side lot’s either side, “and I want it to stretch from the side door to the chain link fence.”

“And you want us to lay that terrace down?” the semi-bearded coworker responds, finding the task to be one that doesn’t fully make sense to him. “Yeah. That won’t be a problem, will it?” Andrew responds, immediately watching the contractor shake his head in refusal.

“No, it’s just that you said you dug up the whole area and got it flatted for us to lay the concrete down on” the bearded worker replies, turning half of his body toward the store owner’s direction, “I just would’ve figured you’d be the kind to finish the job on your own. Laying concrete isn’t exactly rocket science, that’s all.”

With a chuckle, Andrew crosses his arms and shrugs whilst looking back to the evened-out side lot, its dirt surface smoothened and cleared of any obstruction. “I just figured this way would be much easier” the father of two replies, assured in his stance. “Well, alright then” the bearded labourer replies, passing a glance toward his colleague for insistence, “we can get a crew out here on Friday to have the concrete poured. It shouldn’t take more than half a day or so.”

“Sounds perfect” Andrew replies, releasing his arms from each other’s company before extending his dominant hand, shaking that of the labourer he’s put to work.

|

“I hate when it gets dark out early” Derby murmurs, leaning closer toward her windshield whilst glancing out at the sky above, watching it begin to darken as the day winds to a close. “The sun goes down earlier in the winter” Liv replies, automated in her reply as if reciting lines she’d memorised long ago, “it starts to stay in the sky longer when the summer comes aro-”

“Yeah, Liv- I... I know about the winter solstice” Derby replies, passing the girl a half-hearted smile and nod before allowing her to finish, letting free a chuckle as she looks to her passenger seat-occupying friend, “I’m not a complete dumbass.”

Looking back to her undeniably loyal acquaintance, Liv pauses for a moment before staring away, eyes locking onto the empty parking spaces in front of the one he friend’s vehicle takes up. “I know you’re not a dumbass” the special needs girl replies, her reassuring remark accepted half-willingly by the driver, who takes her eyes to the dashboard and stares blankly.

“You’re someone that’s smart and chooses to make people think she’s dumb” Liv continues, speaking in the same insistent patterns of speech that her former condition had forced her words to abide by, “you’re not dumb. I don’t know why you want people to think you are and I know you’re not.”

Having regained the line of sight that her increasingly less-bruised friend wields, Liv looks into the girl’s eyes and puts on a more friendly smile. “I know you’re not dumb” the innocent-appearing teenager reassures, nodding toward the driver before turning away and setting her hand upon the door’s handle. “Goodnight” the special needs teenager concludes, trying to depart on that note whilst the opportunity affords itself.

Lifting the corners of her mouth upward as best as she can, Derby- visibly pleased to be afforded the kind remarks that her friend pays her- nods before thinking better of leaving off on such a silent note. “Hey, Liv?” the driver inquires, her left hand resting on the inward slope that her door’s interior provides like an arm rest, watching her acquaintance turn back once she’d already stepping out of the car.

“What did Coleen mean when she said you wouldn’t bother her again?” Derby inquires, the question being one that’s sat on her mind since earlier in the day, though the opportunity to search for clarity on the topic hadn’t shown itself until now, “did something happen between you two that I don’t know about?”

Looking toward her newly-freed seat for a moment, Liv considers the question and leans her head toward one side, finding satisfaction in the answer she can afford. “She followed me into the bathroom two weeks ago and pushed me” the exiting passenger replies, immediately spotting a well-concealed look of displeasure in the driver’s face, “so I got up and punched her in the mouth.”

The dissatisfaction instantly passing by in favour of a widened-eye look of surprise, Derby’s bottom lip falls away from her upper one for a moment, her shock failing to prevent her from also feeling a sense of pride in her friend’s confession. “Really?” the troublemaker inquires, sitting slightly further upright than when she’d initially put the car in park.

“It was after I found out that they attacked you that night you wanted my help. She deserved it” Liv responds, nodding to her pal before attempting to leave once more, only to be called back for by the driver’s voice. “Weren’t you worried that you’d get in trouble?” Derby questions back, watching her friend’s face dip back into the vehicle at her inquiry’s behest.

“That wouldn’t make sense, would it?” Liv replies, doing the calculations in her head before begging the question that not even she, herself, would be capable of answering with anything other than reassurance, “who’d believe that a retard like me would set her straight?” The brazen, self-awareness not only brings awe upon Derby, but impresses her outright, the homebound teenager closes the vehicle’s door and finally makes for her front door, leaving her acquaintance speechless.

“Way to go, Liv” Derby mutters beneath her breath after a few seconds, bobbing her head up and down with a smile before taking her car to the open road once more, travelling the way in which she’d entered the street on her way toward home. As Liv dips through her front door and vanishes into the Carrion household’s interior, the opportunity presents itself for the street to fill with a pair of headlights, the vibrant shade of pale white cascading itself along the residential street.

Pulling out from the opposite side of the street as the car that leaves the string of houses behind, the vehicle’s patient driver takes after Derby’s taillights, following them around the nearest corner and onward, setting out to follow the rebellious teenager toward wherever her intended destination may be.

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 09 Aug 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e4-speaking-the-quiet-part-out-loud> Thursday, 18th November 2038 <

Pressing her back into the side of the bathroom stall, Coleen lifts her chin toward the ceiling whilst pressing her eyelids shut. Slowly and evenly-spaced, the teenage girl’s breaths steady as she tries to lull herself into a much calmer headspace. Hanging by each of her sides, the blonde student fights off the tension that prompts the tendons in her hands to tighten and the muscles in her stomach to burn.

“Fucking asshole” the girl murmurs beneath her breath, shaking her head whilst balling her hands into fists, gently punching at the stall’s side as she maintains enough composure to keep from exploding into a ball of rage. For a few further seconds, the young woman goes still as she pulls in her largest breath of the day, filling her lungs with air for as long as they’ll allow themselves to expand before letting it free, thrusting a gust of air through her clenched teeth.

Within moments, the visibly frustrated young woman’s fingers spin the cycle-like lock that had kept any other student from entering the same stall, allowing her to push the door outward and re-enter the larger bathroom. Though she comes to a stop, the hanging accessories of the bracelet on her right forearm continue to jingle as Coleen pauses, immediately finding a familiar face awaiting her with arms crossed to match, the visage neither drawing pleasure or discouragement.

“Go hill hike, retard” the bully dismissively groans, paying the special needs student little care other than the roll of her eyes, advancing for the trio of sinks that line the front of the room. Biting into the corner of her bottom lip, Liv watches her blonde tormentor set her focus upon the centre-most mirror and lean close, fixing loose strands of hair whilst making an effort to mind her own business, refusing to acknowledge the student she’d spent years to this point bullying.

“Don’t hit Derby again” Liv remarks, taking advantage of the silence that fills the room and the lack of a third presence to speak, her words instantly catching the ear they’re meant for. With a strange gaze, Coleen turns her face toward her adversary, aware that she stands in front of the exit she’d need to pass through in order to leave, but thinking very little of it. “Excuse me?” the nested-up blonde teen replies, staring at her foe with a squint.

“You heard exactly what I said- I’m not going to bother repeating myself” Liv retorts, uncrossing her arms whilst stepping forward, closing the distance between herself and an increasingly-surprised Coleen. “Derby’s covered in bruises and I know exactly which three people are responsible for them” the bizarrely-coherent young woman states with awe-inspiring confidence, “if she ever winds up with just one bruise again, I will make your life a living hell.”

Aware of the threat that’s been posed, Coleen’s prior aggravations resume their initial hold upon her, taking the form of her hands as they lift into the air and shove her adversary back. Feeling her body jolt with the momentum that had been sent toward her direction, Liv smirks at the weak efforts that befall her before swinging her fist at the bully’s face, immediately knocking her to the ground with unmatched ease.

Hitting the floor bottom-first, Coleen immediately shakes off the initial pain of the strike by placing her hands against the ground, pushing herself backward until her retreat-like crawl is thwarted by the concrete wall. “What the fuck!?” the bully exclaims whilst trying to create separation between herself and the girl she’d believed to be special needs, though that assumption now feels impossible to make, “get away from me you fucking psycho!”

Nostrils flaring, Liv looks down at the young woman as she takes two steps forward, growing closer to the frightened bully, though staying distant enough to allow the attacked woman a chance to look up at her. “I’ve given you one warning and it’s the only one that you’re going to get” the assailant explains, holding her hands upward in a show of surrender, “all I wanted to make sure of was that you got the warning... Leave my friend alone.”

As quickly as they’d gone up in a display of surrender, Liv’s hands return to her sides as her body spins around, redirecting itself toward the door it now quickly steps through. As if having entered a strange dimension she’s yet to fully comprehend her presence in, Coleen looks around the room whilst grimacing in pain, finally feeling the effects of the strike as the awe wears off, leaving her to make sense of the attack she’d just sustained, and who it’d come from.

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

> Tuesday, 23rd November 2038 <

Wiping sweat from his brow whilst occupying the top-most step of a ladder, Andrew passes a glance at the familiar vehicle that comes to a rolling stop just outside the entrance to his shop. “What the hell is all of this!?” Mr. Webster calls out, carrying a folder of papers in one of his two outstretched hands. “The result of a population divided beyond common sense” the father of two replies, gesturing toward the variety of lude comments spray-painted along the building’s exterior.

“No, I mean this!” the defence attorney replies, waving his hand at the ladder his client stands atop, knowing the sight of a bucket and sponge in the store owner’s hand to indicate, “you couldn’t hire someone to clean this mess up for you!?” Shaking his head with a disheartened frown, Andrew scoffs at the claim before dipping his sponge back into the soapy bucket, preparing to take it to a set of red letters that spell ‘racist’- one of the more pleasant terms that adorn his building.

“If there’s any example I want to set for my family, it’s that I can handle things that need to be done myself” Andrew responds, splattering sud-filled waters along the building’s exterior before applying pressure to it. “I was going to close the store for renovations anyway. Cleaning the graffiti at least gives me a reason to do so for a prolonged period of time” the father admits, “since this whole ‘racist’ label thing won’t be going away anytime soon, that might not be a worry anymore.”

“Why not?” Mr. Webster questions aloud, stepping away from being close to the building as droplets of water fall toward the ground furiously, threatening to catch his expensive suit in the process. “What people are going to want to shop at a plant store owned by the local racist, Mr. Webster?” Andrew inquires, leaning one forearm against the top of the ladder as he wipes with the other, “this whole case will just end up with me going out of business.”

“Well, not if there isn’t a case!” Mr. Webster proclaims, watching the store’s owner look toward him before pointing to the folder in his out-stretched hand, “that’s what I was coming to talk to you about!” Confused, Andrew squints at the man before glancing at the plain note-carrier in his lawyer’s hand, unsure of what’s being gotten at. “What do you mean?” the besmirched store owner replies, discarding his sponge back into the water-filled bucket.

“Someone came forward with dashcam footage of what happened! They were parked in the lot next to that burger place that was next door to the supermarket!” the defence attorney proclaims with glee. “What!?” Andrew calls out, his eyes widening as he begins descending the rungs of the ladder that lead to the asphalt walkway around the side of his store.

“Apparently, they came forward the same day you got released from the slammer. I don’t know what’s been going on since then, but the cops must’ve been taking their sweet time at putting the pieces between his report and your report together!” Mr. Webster cheers, extending the folder of printed pictures toward the surprised father, who finds different screenshots of the altercation in its entirety- ironically in black and white.

With his lips slightly parted from each other, Andrew stares in awe at the visual proof that solidifies his claim, yet to present an over-the-moon attitude the way in which his attorney had anticipated. “You’re in the clear! His lawyer just dropped all charges and we’ve already got this thing being sent to the news!” Mr. Webster proceeds, seemingly more pleased with this outcome than his client is, “this is fantastic for you, what’s with the look of shock and awe!?”

In a slightly-stunned silence, the father appears to be at a loss for words as he squints toward the ground, returning the various photographs to the man who’d handed them to him. “I’m, uh... I’m not sure” Andrew confesses, using the pause to shift his reflection into his best attempt at happiness, trying to work his way toward the reaction his attorney wishes for him to give whilst dismissing anything less as his brain processing the news.

“This is fantastic news!” Andrew doubles down, finally beginning to wander his way toward the chipper and overjoyed mannerisms his acquaintance originally expected to see. “Yeah, there you go! You’re in the clear!” Mr. Webster reassures, seemingly convinced by the explanation that’s paid toward him, writing off the initial rejoinder as being caused by the suddenness of it all.

|

“What’s this?” Coleen whispers to herself whilst pulling into her home’s driveway, staring at the back of a black SUV that occupies the spot her vehicle is usually meant to take. With the press of a button, the blonde girl turns off her car and steps out of the driver’s seat, a sugar-filled coffee carried in her hand as she approaches the front door to her home, attempting to enter just as she’d intended.

“You’re insane!” a masculine voice calls out from the kitchen, unaware of the ear that his voice catches in the far off sides of the home, his temper flaring just the same as the woman he speaks with. “I’m insane!?” a more feminine voice retorts, speaking as if she were intent on making her offence well-noticed, “I haven’t gotten a single child support payment from you for the last seven months! You haven’t shown your face around here for nine months!”

Keeping her presence under wraps, Coleen calmly walks toward the entrance to one corridor before remaining put, keeping her distance from the conversation whilst ensuring what’s said is within hearing range. “Child supp-!?” the male voice proclaims, stopping himself halfway through the remark with a gasp, almost amusing himself, “look around you, Susana! You live in a multi-million dollar home that you purchased with my money!”

Scoffing at the notion, Coleen’s mother rolls her eyes and smirks at the man’s comments, taking them as a personal insult more than anything else. “You got knocked up with my kid three months in, I married you because of it, and then you immediately turned around to divorce me!” the man doubles down, speaking over the various silence-filler and snide comments his former wife makes to discourage him, “why would I give child support to a woman whose entire livelihood is already paid for by me!?”

“The court told you how much you owed me every month! You know what happens when you don’t pay up!” Susana responds, watching her ex-husband’s head bow toward the ground amidst her pause. “Of course I know what happens when I don’t pay up, Susana. I haven’t seen my child in almost a year because you’ve weaponised her against me” the man rebukes, his tone having dropped to something more resembling sorrow.

“Weaponised” Susana laughs, poking fun at the claim the father of her child makes, “give me a break, Tyler.” Though their daughter cannot see it, her father’s eyes widen as his discontent only further deepens its hold over him. “You’ve forced me to lawyer up, pay for your lawyers, and make a case to the court that I’d like to be involved in my daughter’s life” Tyler explains, his hands pressed together and voice lowered to the calmest tone it can carry, “and still, you’ve refused me visitation.”

“If you won’t pay up, you clearly don’t value seeing your daughter that much” Susana responds, a comment that only further infuriates the man who her comments were meant for. “I-” Tyler attempts to reply, immediately falling silent before throwing his hands into the air, his back turning toward the home’s primary occupant as he shakes his head and walks off, “I’m getting nowhere with you.”

“Yeah, and you’re getting nowhere closer to seeing your daughter without opening up your wallet” Susana doubles down, following after the man as he walks away, refusing to let him escape her onslaught of insults on his way toward the front door. Keeping his composure intact whilst venturing toward the front door, Tyler weathers the comments his ex-wife makes whilst coupling his hands around his mouth, trying to forcefully prevent himself from speaking.

“I hope you’re not expecting to win in court, Tyler!” Susana continues to bark, following the man through the front door and out toward his car, “just pay up and you’ll see your daughter! Good luck convincing the judge that you’re fit to be a parent when you can’t even follow up on your commitment to pay for her!”

Without so much as a peep, the father to the woman’s only daughter climbs into the driver’s seat of his black SUV and quickly pulls out of the driveway, spilling out onto the street that he quickly uses to escape the situation. Able to hear the sound of burning rubber scraping against the asphalt through her open window, Coleen watches Tyler’s car speed off in the opposite direction as her.

Having hurried to her car and pulled out onto a second street, the subject of the parent’s argument watches her father’s bulky automobile disappear around the distant corner whilst her mother flips it off, returning for the front door to their home whilst muttering insults beneath her breath.

|

From the start of one line to the end of it, Liv’s eyes traipse across the pages of the textbook that lays across the surface of her desk, taking in the information that the words come together to form. Feeling the weight of her eyelids grow, the teenager pulls her face away from the pages that take her focus and presses the base of her hands against them, trying to wipe the exhaustion that wishes to overwhelm her in the name of keeping a sturdier focus on her studies.

*knock, knock, knock*

Picking her head up at the sound of the gentle pattern of knuckle-taps, Liv’s face turns with the rest of her body in the spinning chair, centring themselves upon the door to her room, which remains closed for the moment being. “Come in” the girl mutters in a distant and automated tone, watching her door gently creep open and allow her a glimpse of the familiar face on its other end.

“Hi, I’m sorry to be a bother” Elaine remarks, stepping halfway through the entrance before stopping, not wanting to intrude any further than she already has, “are you busy right now?” Looking forward with a blank stare for a moment, Liv lets her bottom lip hang slightly apart from her upper one before replying. “Yes” the girl answers after a pause, hands draped over the sides of her chair as she lets the reply linger.

“Oh, alright- uh-” Elaine stammers, looking toward the ground with a slight disappointment, the emotion being one that she feels a responsibility to discourage herself from taking. “Just let me know when you’re free to talk for a minute or two, alright?” the woman follows up, bowing out of the conversation she’d started as quickly as it had been opened, not wanting to impede upon her step daughter’s duties to schoolwork.

“You look sad” Liv quips, inspecting the woman’s posture for the emotion that’s easy to read, watching her step mother’s face quickly try to dismiss the down-trodden visage it’d worn in favour of an empty smile. “Oh, no honey. No, I-” Elaine tries to reply, falling short of anything more than empty emphasis that succeeds a friendly refusal, her lack of more to add prompting her to try departing with a smile once more, “no, honey. I’m not.”

“It’s okay if you are” Liv replies, taking advantage of the social progress almost no one in the world knows of to point out the indicators that give her stepmother’s displeasure away. “I miss when you drove me to school. I miss how you and dad were before Sophie went away” she doubles down, watching the blank guise upon the grown woman’s face begin to melt away beneath the memory of pleasurable recollection, “I miss when we were friends.”

Though her heart takes great warmth in the young woman’s remarks, the last quip that her step daughter makes brings a slight dissatisfaction over the woman at the door. “Honey, we are friends” Elaine reassures, hiding her hope that the girl doesn’t feel that such a comment were untrue, “I know a lot has happened ever since then, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t friends.”

Taking the woman’s comments to heart, Liv looks off into a corner of the room for a moment as she feigns processing, her efforts not spent on making sense of her stepmother’s comments, but of the ones she wishes to utter herself. “Then I haven’t been a very good friend” she concludes, yet to look back in the direction of the woman in her doorway, the comment spoken aloud with distance.

“It’s not that you haven’t been a good friend, dear. With your baby brother, with work, with each other- your father and I have just had a lot to do” Elaine responds, entering the rest of the way into the room. “We spent a lot more time together before everything happened with your sister. A part of growing up is that you have less time to spend with friends, that’s all” the girl’s former driver reassures, seeing her own way to the foot of the girl’s bed, which she takes a seat upon.

“That’s not a very good excuse” Liv responds, confessing such a statement in the same moment that her mother settles into the space at the end of her bed. “I’m sorry?” Elaine immediately questions, lowering her chin just slightly as she looks into the side of the girl’s face, the young woman’s eyes not budging from their place along a random spot of the floor.

“You’re my stepmother. We live in the same house. We have time for each other, but we don’t use it” Liv responds, taking very little time to process that reply compared to her others. “I shut you and dad out after Sophie went away. I just wanted to be left alone. Both of you have just let me have my space since then” the girl carries on, speaking freely whilst her stepmother listens on, “the two of you have had all the time in the world to spend with me. I just haven’t let you.”

With slightly-wider eyes than the ones she’d entered the room with, Elaine sits with the young girl’s comments for a moment before looking toward the ground herself, unsure of how to respond. “Well, honey... I-” she stammers, finding it difficult to come by responses that don’t contain parts that she discourages herself to bring up.

“It’s because I’m ‘special’, isn’t it?” Liv inquires, correctly using air quotes around the stand-out word that she looks toward the grown woman whilst saying. Initially looking at her stepdaughter with parted lips, Elaine’s eyes glue themselves to the younger woman as she stares in silence for a moment, mouth soon closing and head slowly beginning to nod apologetically, the best answer she can think to offer in that moment.

Slightly disheartened, Liv looks away from her mother’s face and toward the ground at first, her face eventually making its way toward the corner of the room once more. Thinking quietly to herself, the act-upholding teenager sits with the conclusion for a moment and lets it settle in, not yet knowing how to feel about the result of the conversation.

|

‘We are closed until the start of December’ a white sign reads with black lettering, the collection of eight words presented toward the street-facing side of the small business’ storefront. Wiping his dirt-covered hands clean, Andrew steps away from the pair of doors and wanders into the back of it, retreating to the break room that he soon passes through in favour of exiting all together, stepping beyond the employee entrance and into an alleyway that connects to a small, side yard.

Opening the trunk of his sedan, the father of two and devoted husband retrieves a shovel from atop a large tarp, various other gardening tools a space off to its side. With ease, Andrew closes the trunk and turns in favour of the building’s side alley, the door to a gate already propped open with a cinderblock and allowing him unobstructed passage.

Having originally occupied the space earlier in the day by starting the process of wiping his store’s exterior clean of the graffiti that had been scattered amongst it, Andrew ventures toward the side lot for a very different reason now that the sun has fallen beneath the horizon. “You have a nice store, sir” a young voice calls out from behind the fence that had been installed around the right side of the premises in lieu of the damage that had been done to the building.

Looking up with surprise and widened eyes, Andrew’s face takes toward the direction of the feminine tone, spotting a blonde girl out with relative ease. For a moment, the man stands in silence as the visitor’s claim goes without a reply, left for interpretation without something in return for it. “Thank you” he finally responds, inspecting the girl’s posture without certainty over who she is, only able to read very little from her pocket-tucked hands and bright pink, puffy coat.

“Can I help you?” Andrew wonders aloud, her unthreatening posture affording him the opportunity to convince himself that her unannounced appearance may not conceal malicious intent. “Not really” the blonde girl replies, having yet to look at the store’s owner, and instead keeping her gaze focused on the assortment of plant life that lines the building’s central column inside.

“Why are you here then?” Andrew responds, having yet to move from the spot that he’d stopped in upon the voice’s arrival, hesitant to react in any way other than hesitant after the week he’d been assaulted with. “My mom and dad hate each other and I’m just a pawn in their game” the visiting teenager responds, her face separated by the chain link by little more than an inch’s length, “I’ve been driving around all day and passed by this place three times.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear about your folks, but that still doesn’t answer why you’re here now” Andrew retorts, gently letting the head of his shovel rest against the softer-than-usual dirt, the cold climate that falls over the middle of Missouri slightly warmer than it usually is. “Your store was the only one with lights on when I came around the third time” the girl responds, turning to look in the father’s direction with a defeated grin, “the plants are nice to look at.”

Lifting his chin, Andrew looks into the teen girl’s face with as much confusion as he’d first encountered her with, unsure of what makes her stand out to him aside from the surprise that her presence presents. “Do I know you, little girl?” the man inquires with reservation, only to watch the stranger’s head bow toward the ground upon first reaction.

“I go to school with your daughter...” the girl replies, looking the man in his eyes as she pauses, holding back a slight irritation, “...the retarded one.” As if the word had launched a physical strike at him instead of an emotional one, Andrew lets the shovel’s handle fall from his hand as he steps forward, “what did you just say about my-?” he angrily questions, approaching the fence with a full head of steam before his progression is halted.

“She cornered me in the bathroom last week. She punched me in the face and told me to stay away from her friends” Coleen quips, her claims forcing the father to fall quiet for a moment. “I haven’t gone back to school since! I’ve got enough shit going on in my own family, I don’t need to deal with whatever’s wrong with yours!” the girl doubles down, stepping away from the barrier that the shop’s owner presses into, “so tell your daughter to keep her psycho hands off me!”

Calling out for the teenager’s return, Andrew ventures toward the second entrance that the gate holds, its door having been padlocked shut to prevent the public entry. Fitting his hand into his pocket, the shop’s operator reclaims the key and frees the door for himself to travel through, stepping out onto the sidewalk just as Coleen’s foot takes to her vehicle’s pedal, driving off into the night without another word.

“Don’t talk about my daughter like that ever!” Andrew howls, chasing after the vehicle until the moment that it burns rubber away from his reach, leaving him running into the centre of the empty road to watch the driver take off. Seething, the man kicks the ground in frustration and grunts as he punches the air, his aggravation having boiled over the edge and prevented from being acted upon by the girl’s departure.

With his hands on his hips, Andrew stares at the ground whilst the sound of a catchy jingle plays from the device on his wrist, buzzing with vibration as a call to the owner’s attention. “Answer call” the man grumbles aloud, conceding defeat to being left in the dust by the teenager’s vehicle as he stomps back to the store’s side lot.

“Hello?” the man inquires, speaking to the woman on the other end of his smart watch whilst returning toward his ground-penetrating shovel. “Andrew? It’s Elaine” the woman replies, her voice catching the ear of the man who angrily grasps the wooden handle of his tool. “Hey, honey. Listen, I’m still at the shop. I should’ve told you sooner that I was staying late, it just slipped my-” he attempts to explain, only to find himself thwarted by his wife’s interjection.

“Honey, listen...” Elaine remarks, her interruption both uncommon and attention-earning, stopping the remarks that her husband attempts to make whilst capturing his ear. “What’s up?” he asks with genuine curiosity, standing along the grass that he removes his shovel from, holding it in the middle of the air as he waits for the woman to continue.

“Well, I just got done talking to Liv a few minutes ago. We had a- well, interesting conversation” Elaine informs, the comment being one that prompts her husband to furrow his eyebrows. “Oh yeah?” Andrew replies, picking up the tool and hoisting it over his shoulder as he journeys through the alleyway-facing side of the gate, “what were you talking about?”

Retreating to his car, the father extends his foot to a sensor just below the vehicle’s bumper, its presence proving enough to trigger the trunk to open its door automatically. “Actually, that’s why I was calling you” Elaine replies, unable to watch her husband return his shovel to the automobile’s rear compartment and close its shell, “she said there’s something she wants to tell both of us together.”

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 02 Aug 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e3-i-did-a-bad-thing-today> Thursday, 18th November 2038 <

“Your lawyer will be in touch and keep you up to date with your court date” a woman in uniform remarks from behind a secretary’s desk, “it’s imperative that you show up to that court date so you aren’t held in contempt.” Taking claim of a plastic bag with his cell phone, keys, and wallet within them, Andrew scowls at the woman whose hair is tied into a neat bun, his visible displeasure forcefully juxtaposed to her purposefully-ingenuine smile.

“Take care” she utters, continuing to grin from one ear to another at the man whose departure sparks their brief, yet ire-drawing conversation. “Yeah, fuck you” Andrew responds, opening the plastic bag whilst his wife gently pulls at his arm, guiding her husband away from any further remarks that may be seen in poor taste. “Lobbing insults at the officers won’t make your day any better” Elaine quips, gently wrapping her arm around the one that stands at the man’s side.

“It may not change my day, but it’ll give me a few seconds of pleasure” Andrew retorts, half of his heart not even truly buying into such a claim. “Does that make it worth it anymore than it already is?” Elaine inquires, continuing to step for the police station’s front doors alongside the man who she’d sworn to stand by through thick and thin. 

“I just got arrested for beating some punk for trying to snatch a kid from his mother, and now I’m being labelled a racist ‘cause the scumbag happens to be black” Andrew rebukes, paying no mind to slow their progression toward the building’s exit in spite of the litany of people that stand on the opposite side of it. “It’s not an enviable position, honey. However, it’s-” Elaine attempts to reply, only to find her voice overwhelmed by the flurry of voices that call out once the glass doors part.

“Mr. Carrion!” the voices of various reporters cry out, thrusting their microphones into the faces of a father who’d already been the subject of intense public scrutiny many years ago. Asking their own questions toward the father, the reporters take their time in pulling away from the swarm they’d attacked the patriarch in the form of as he advances through, not relenting in his attempted retreat from the station whilst stepping ahead of his wife to protect her.

“Everybody back up and keep your distance!” a man in a long coat exclaims with a briefcase in tow, gently resting his palm against Elaine’s lower back whilst walking alongside the father of two. “Who are you!?” one reporter calls out, taking interest in the unexpected third party that plays catch up to his clients. “I’m defence attorney Henry Webster” the lawyer responds, taking a slight step forward to lead the married couple through the sea of invasive story-finders.

“My client has nothing to say to any of you at this time” Henry proclaims, voicing aloud the results that those with the microphones and cameras are bound to receive, “we will not accept any attempt at receiving answers to questions whilst this legal process is carried out. Any attempts to interrogate my client will be seen as harassment and will result in a lawsuit directed toward you and your employers.”

Dispersing the crowd quicker than the father’s stubborn advancement had, Mr. Webster eventually returns the pair to semi-comfort, opening the backdoors to an SUV for them to climb aboard. Following them, the defence attorney shuts the door upon their entry and signals for the driver to step upon the pedal, carrying the vehicle and themselves away from the swath of investigative journalists and back toward the direction of relative sanctuary.

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

“Coleen” Mrs. Danielson calls out from the relative comfort of her old and very-aged desk chair, picking out one of the only two figures to raise their hand in an effort of answering the question. “Shakespeare?” the teenager wonders aloud, taking her best shot at the question, though her answer makes it seem as though she hadn’t understood what was asked.

“No, I know who wrote it... I’m asking for what the play was called” Mrs. Danielson reiterates, watching a look of unsureness replace the expression of uncertainty that the girl’s face had originally worn. For a few seconds, Mrs. Danielson looks around the room for a potential hand to lift, hoping to call upon a face now that the only other hand beside Coleen’s had followed suit in lowering out of not knowing the answer.

“The Life and Death of King John, anyone?” Mrs. Danielson questions, conceding to the lack of a proper answer that her class fails to offer, accepting their short-coming before taking displeasure in their collective failure to even feign the slightest familiarity with the subject matter. “Oh, come on! We went over this a week and a half ago!” the teacher persists, holding out hope for something other than a blank and lost stare to meet her, “the test is in three days... you should know this!”

Paying no mind to the conversation that’s happening near the front of the room, Liv’s eyes lock onto the same sight that steals every last ounce of her attention, frozen upon the empty seat that sits beside her without an occupant. “What about the main character?” Mrs. Danielson wonders aloud, leaning back in her seat with the textbook open across her lap, eyes held toward the small number of students that share the classroom with her, “who is the main character of King John?”

Waiting for a moment, the dissatisfied teacher watches her small in-person class keep their faces toward the surfaces of their desks, hesitant to answer. In the back of the room, only one hand begins to rise from the bottom of the screen the student hides within, taking more of an active role from the comfort of their own home than the students in actual attendance. “Yes, Bryan!” Mrs. Danielson calls out, picking on the unconfident blonde teenager with a buzzcut.

“Is it King John?” Bryan replies, the tone of his voice making it clear that he’s not fully confident in the answer that he offers. Still displeased with the participation amongst her class, Mrs. Danielson frowns in the online student’s direction and sinks further into her chair. “What have I been teaching you all school year about what we do when we answer questions?” the teacher inquires, looking out to the small group of students that sit within the unnecessary number of empty desks.

“That we shouldn’t answer in the form of a question!” Coleen exclaims, refusing to even offer the lift of her hand in the name of making good upon her earlier misinterpretation of the inquiry. “Yes! Thank you! At least someone pays attention in class” Mrs. Danielson responds, extending her hands back toward the rows of screen in the back of the room, “now, Bryan... Please answer the question I asked instead of asking your own!”

Allowing the events that surround her to continue without interruption, Liv remains fixated on the empty seat that sits along her right side, staring at it with a blank expression without even trying to hide how little she’s paying attention to the lesson that she’s meant to participate in. “Yes, Bryan... It is King John!” Mrs. Danielson responds, accepting the answer her online student had offered with an obvious tone of discontent, pulling in a breath as she pauses before watching a hand rise.

“Yes, Liv?” the teacher inquires, spotting the special needs student out from the crowd that sits before her. “May I use the restroom, please?” the teen inquires, her question only further fueling the displeasure of her educator’s guise. “Yep” Mrs. Danielson concedes, burying her eyes into the text that’s scrawled upon the pages that sit in her lap as the student steps out of her seat, walking down her stretch of desks and around the front of the room whilst Coleen and her friends watch on.

Empty handed and with little reason to maintain the ruse, Liv walks throughout the empty stretches of hallway that separate her from various sections of the building. At first travelling back toward her lockers, the curious student turns away upon realising the area is empty, freeing her to journey toward other avenues. With a glance into the window that separates the front office from the front of the building, the specialty-feigning teenager finds the lack of anything worthwhile there as well.

Glancing into whatever rooms are free to be looked into ranging from classrooms to the cafeteria to the courtyard at the front of the building, Liv begins to find herself running low on options. In search of one person in particular, the consistent failure to find whom she yearns to see leaves her more depleted and disheartened with each passing step, its result leading her to making for the closest bathroom in an effort of looking to her phone for answers.

Hanging her head, Liv reaches into her pocket and retrieves her mobile device whilst thrusting her shoulder into the first door she finds, offering her what she first assumes to be privacy, but soon realises provides her with an answer. “Oh!” the teenager girl mutters as she looks up from the ground, entering the room and immediately finding the reflection of a familiar face in the centre-most mirror along the sinks.

Briefly glancing in the direction of the bathroom’s entrance, Derby notices the presence of her friend and rolls her eyes with displeasure, concealing her anger toward the young woman whom she struggles to convince herself to be mad at. “Hey, Liv” the rebellious student murmurs whilst looking back at the mirrored image of her own face, a bruised left eye, busted lip and broken nose worn like battlescars from her altercation of the prior night.

“What happened!?” Liv questions with a gasp, yet to resume feigning her autistic mannerisms in lieu of her friend’s wounded appearance, though it’s a slip-up that’s not easily noticed. Puckering her lips as she stares into the ceramic bowl that her sink’s inner-construction slopes into, Derby gives her best effort at concealing her rage for the friend’s failure to appear the night prior by answering with short and simple sentences.

“You didn’t show up last night” the assaulted student replies, gently rubbing at various colours that surround her eye, the swelling prompting her to wince at even the lightest graze. “So, since I couldn’t really just wait around and hope for the best, I just decided to try and do what I needed to without you” Derby confesses, pressing her side into the sink as she stares at the sorrowful young woman across from her, “as you can see, it obviously didn’t go very well for me.”

Though she wants to raise a question immediately, Liv recalls the act that she nearly fails to resume in time, staring blankly into the distant wall that stands behind the wounded student before bobbing her head again. “My dad got arrested last night” the special needs teenager responds, still trying to offer her best explanation for leaving the woman to the assault that had befallen her, “Elaine told me not to leave the house.”

Though she’d still made an effort to be reasonable and wary of her friend's unusual condition, the subdued aggravation that the troubled teen had held toward her acquaintance goes out the window with the clarification. “Shit, Liv. I... I’m sorry, I didn’t know” Derby explains, genuinely disappointed to hear the news, though she struggles to make that clear in light of the pain and fatigue that she’s forced to succumb to, “is... Is he alright?”

Though she nods at first to the reply, Liv looks into the distance to offer herself a moment of clarity, answering the question after a brief pause. “I don’t know what he did, but mom left to pick him up from the police station after she dropped me off” the autistic student responds, pausing yet again as Derby attempts to speak, not knowing that her pal had intended to continue speaking.

“It’s not a good excuse, though. I told you that I’d be there and I wasn’t” Liv doubles down, watching a more warm and appreciative expression come over her acquaintance’s wounded face, “I’m sorry, Derby.” Bowing her head for a brief moment, the injured student tries her best to hide a smile before looking back up and nodding.

“It’s alright, Liv” Derby answers, genuinely dismissing any of the lingering anger in light of the apology she hadn’t even realised her friend was capable of offering from a place of sincerity, pleased to at least know the young woman across from her can comprehend honouring one’s word. “What happened last night?” Liv follows up, asking the question that she’d initially wanted to raise prior to explaining her absence, “who attacked you? Why did they attack you?”

Freeing a long and extended sigh, Derby rolls her eyes and winces at the pain in her side whilst looking into the mirror she’d initially faced when her presence in the room became shared. “Coleen and those pests usually go to this warehouse downtown- an old building that’s been empty for, like, fifteen years- and drink booze they snatch from their parents’ liquor cabinets” the troubled teen admits, “I set up my phone the other night to film them.”

“Coleen and her friends did this to you!?” Liv immediately interjects, the haste in her reply surprising her injured friend, who looks back to her with a momentary shock at first. “Uh... yeah?” Derby replies, almost speaking as if that much should’ve been expected from the start, “who else would’ve beat me up like this?”

With wide eyes and a steadily-held distant expression, Liv looks into her friend’s face as she processes the claims internally, her lips moving at a quiver-like pace as she pulls her focus away from the wounded teenager. “They found my phone and knew I was coming. They got the jump on me, tossed my phone in the fire, and they left me there to get out myself” Derby doubles down, finishing her thought without interruption this second time around, “now I’m here.”

Struggling to funnel through her thoughts, Liv’s mind pushes beyond the claims that her friend makes and instead toward the visage of all three perpetrators of the attack her absence is partially responsible for. Though the feeling of anger courses through the muscles in her arms when picturing Leila and Elva, the sensation of outright rage sinks into her conscience like a vessel dips below the surface of the sea when the image of Coleen presents itself upon her mind.

“Anyway, I’ll see you in class a little later, Liv. I still need the office to process my tardy slip and then I’ll be in” Derby concludes, patting her friend on the shoulder whilst accepting the silence that she’s bound to be met with, walking past and venturing through the room’s exit. Seething where she was left standing, Liv looks at the black face of the white-painted, concrete walls that surround the room, a brief nibble taken into her bottom lip as she’s left with her thoughts.

|

“I’m not changing my story!” Andrew howls, slamming his balled hand against the countertop of his kitchen’s island, vehemently refusing the suggestion that his attorney pleads for him to consider. “Mr. Carrion, the parking lot doesn’t have security cameras and no one is coming forward to claim that the man you attacked was anything more than a passerby” Mr. Webster responds, occupying one of the stools on the distant side of the island.

“I saw the look in that little girl’s eye when that van pulled out of that fucking spot” Andrew retorts, defending his claim with absolute resilience, “that dirty fucking bastard tried to snatch the kid away from her mom. I don’t care if there wasn’t a camera to catch it... I know what happened.”

“I’m not claiming that you don’t, and I’m not calling you a liar. The point of all this is that- unless the woman comes forward to corroborate your claim- it’s a ‘he said-he said’ argument” Mr. Webster responds, wearing a look that doesn’t urge confidence, “and with how biassed the courts have become against people like you whenever the term ‘hate crime’ gets thrown around, you better bet that your odds of walking out with a ‘not guilty’ verdict are slim-to-none.”

“Mr. Webster, there are tire tracks burned into the asphalt from the van pulling out” Andrew argues back, a conclusion that the defence attorney takes little care in. “Tasking the prosecutors with arguing that those tracks could’ve been from any other vehicle would be like challenging them to take a walk in the park...” Mr. Webster responds, patting the countertop to display the level of ease he speaks to, “...unless they’re hypoallergenic, they’ll have no trouble whatsoever.”

“What if the woman came forward to argue in Andrew’s favour?” Elaine inquires, butting into the conversation with more topical optimism to offer. “Well we wouldn’t be arguing it as ‘he said-he said’ now, would we?” the defence attorney rebukes, darting his eyes back toward the direction of the subject to his visit, “but unless your husband has found a way to get in contact with this woman, I’d suggest you start hitting the press circuit and asking her to come forward if you want her to show up.”

Their conversation coming to a pause at the sound of the home’s front door closing, the three inhabitants of the kitchen look past the arch that separates the home’s foyer from them to find a familiar face. “Hey, Liv! Uh-” Elaine speaks up, wanting to offer words in lieu of her husband’s less-than-affable mood and the unfamiliarity of the defence attorney.

“I have homework” Liv quickly interrupts, not paying much mind toward entertaining her step mother’s greeting before wandering off for the second level of the home. Though she’d already been disappointed by the strife in which her only child’s father is embroiled in, the dismissive manner in which her step daughter reacts to her only further deepens the discontent that overcomes her.

“Mr. Carrion, I’m not suggesting that you take the stand, admit to being a racist and apologise for your actions. All I’m suggesting is that- in whatever you say- you act as if you’re open-minded to the idea that you may have have some prejudicial undertones to the way you handled the situation” the attorney suggests, “you can argue that the woman and her kid existed, but as long as you admit you may have misread the situation, a jury might be more willing to believe they existed.”

“How the hell would that be any different from arguing that he tried to snatch her kid!?” Andrew calls out in a rage, feeling as though the solution presented isn’t much different from the preferable option at his disposal. “Because- unless the judge lets us select the jurors- it’ll look better to an all-black panel” Mr. Webster replies, “they’ll be unlikely to go along with the lady being involved if he attacked her, but they’ll likely go for it if she’s not used to make their own look bad.”

“I don’t give a fuck about how black people are made out to look. What I care about is having kept a girl from ending up like Sophie- but in an even worse position- and being painted out as the villain!” Andrew exclaims, his voice reverberating throughout the home. “Well, if this plan isn’t one that you’re willing to go for, I’d suggest you start putting out flyers to look for this white lady and her kid” Mr. Webster concedes, throwing his hands up in defeat, “it looks like your only option.”

Slapping the island’s surface, Andrew presses his hands against his hips and turns away from his wife and the man he’d paid to attend to his legal matters, staring through the window that resides just over the sink. Sitting with his own anger, the father of two tries to clear his mind of the intrusive thoughts that fill his head, their presence undesired and unpleasant.

Whilst Elaine rounds the kitchen’s centre-most obstacle to comfort the man she’d married, an unseen spectator remains seated upon the home’s main staircase listening in, her head pressing against the drywall that acts almost like an amplifier. With a sombre expression, Liv sits with her thoughts and allows them to stew before disappointedly collecting her knapsack and following through with her venture toward the bedroom that awaits her presence.

“We’re going to figure something out, honey” Elaine whispers, resting her hands against Andrew’s shoulder and arm whilst trying to offer him comfort. Attempting to double down on her reassurance, the household’s matriarch overhears the creaking of floorboards just over her head, the pair of feet that journeys across the hallway one level above being dismissed by the girl’s father.

|

“I didn’t expect to come back to this camera so soon” Liv confesses, sitting in the chair to her desk at the centre of the room once more, this time looking into the lens that is positioned across the surface of her desk, the legs that had allowed it to stand freely having been tucked away in the corner. 

“I kinda sorta expected to go radio silent for a while and only start filming once I felt the next stage of my slip beginning, but I’m pretty sure that next stage is already here” she doubles down, continuing to eye her reflection in the slightly-rounded lens. Swallowing a wad of spit that builds up in her mouth, Liv’s eyes take to the corner of her desk, spotting a blue mug with white print dawning upon the outside of it, the text reading her name in playful, rounded letters.

“I took my meds this morning, so I can’t even claim that this is something I can write off as being no big deal” the girl explains, ridding herself of any opportunity to dismiss the events as the cause of some other motivation. “Everything was going fine until I found Derby in the bathroom. Her face was bruised, and even though I had nothing to do with attacking her- it was still partially my fault” Liv admits, conceding to that point in the name of something more.

“I felt so bad about having stood her up, but all of that changed when she mentioned what happened last night...” she continues, pausing for a moment as her face begins to hold a sorrowful and slightly-bitter expression, “...and who did it.”

Falling silent, Liv reflects upon the recollection she had from earlier in the day quietly, retaining as much memory from the altercation that had ensued as she can, knowing it to be vital for anything she does from this point onward. Pulling in a deep breath, the girl opens the eyes she’d yet to realise had closed, parting her lips to come clean with the action she’d taken and had left her conscience to bear the weight of.

“I did a bad thing today.”

Vividly remembering the frustration that had been worn on the girl’s face, Liv recalls focusing on the visage of Coleen as she’d ventured around a corner in search of the closest bathroom. With a frown and irritated eyes, the teenage bully had failed to take notice of the special needs student she’d mistreated so frequently that it had almost become second nature to that point, instead preferring to follow her aggravation to a more secluded area, wishing to simmer in private.

Though she’d partially gone unnoticed thanks to hiding over half of her body behind the door of her full-sized locker, Liv’s lack of detection allowed her eyes to follow Coleen’s figure around the nearest corner and through the door that had awaited her. With slightly-parted lips and an intense stare, the facade-supporting teenager had used the brief moment of thought that had come upon her to glance in either direction of the corridor that she occupies, taking notice of how empty it is.

Realising how devoid of attention she is, Liv’s focus sets its full attention upon the bathroom door her tormentor had dipped through, yet to move a muscle away from the open panel of her storage compartment. “Aside from that one instance I told you- the camera, I suppose- about the other night, there’d never been a better opportunity to get Coleen alone than this one” the girl utters, confessing to the motivation that urged her to take action, “something inside of me refused to let it go.”

Able to remember the slightly-cold sensation of the metal door she’d proceeded to close after a moment of thought, Liv follows through with recalling the weight of every step she’d taken from her locker to the bathroom door, each sensation that had accompanied her along the journey proving to be just as memorable as every other. Pushing her forearm into the wooden door, the supposedly-autistic student would follow her adversary into the bathroom and vanish behind the closing door.

“If anyone ever finds this tape and watches it, I want to make it clear that I don’t think there’s anything worse than feeling like you have to live a life of lies because of how convinced you’ve made some of the people in your life” Liv admits, struggling to word her thoughts correctly, but making sure to pay extra effort to them, “even if it’s just out of self-preservation, I’m not sure there’s anyone that understands the feeling of not being able to tell people the truth about yourself.”

Sucking on her bottom lip, Liv shakes her head whilst looking at her own reflection in a mirror that’s propped up along a shelf near the top of her desk. “I know there’s a purpose to it, and I know that I don’t pretend to still be autistic for whatever benefits come with it, but I still feel dirty about having to hide this part of my life” the girl confesses, unable to look away from her own sorrowful expression, “I just need you to understand why the urge to give up this secret is so strong.”

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 26 Jul 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e2-when-forced-to-go-it-alone> Wednesday, 17th November 2038 <

“Your total is twenty dollars and sixty three cents” a polite woman remarks with a smile as she looks away from the cash register she stands before, her eyes finding their way to the plastic card that’s extended toward her. Without saying a word, the man who’d only bought a pair of pruning shears and a few packets of seeds sets his newly-purchased items into the fabric bag he’d brought with him into the store.

“Just confirm your purchase on the keypad in front of you, add a tip if you’d like to, and you’ll be on your way, sir” the cashier gleefully remarks, trying to offer more than the distant and impersonal attitude she’s used to receiving from her coworkers. With a sigh, the patron confirms the price that’s shown to him, adds a two dollar tip and looks back to the much younger woman, passing her a friendly nod and smile as he departs for the store’s exit.

Setting off for his car, a bearded, short-haired Andrew pops the trunk open and reaches into the bag that he’d exited the shop with, quickly tossing the various packets of seeds into an organiser as if they were playing cards. “Get away from-!” a woman’s voice exclaims from the opposite side of the parking lot, her struggle prompting the father of two to turn toward her direction, finding a man in a black hoodie attempting to snatch something from the backseat of the woman’s car.

With his eyebrows narrowing, Andrew watches the struggle persist for a moment before noticing the woman’s frame colliding with the ground at the front half of the vehicle, though the man’s adamant efforts continue with the object he seems intent on taking for himself. Stepping forward, the bearded father of two reaches into his fabric bag whilst venturing across the asphalt lot, his progression going unnoticed by the apparent criminal.

Stepping just past the minivan’s still-open trunk, Andrew watches the dazed mother try to climb off the ground whilst he takes the hooded figure by the neck, acting on instinct whilst still unsure of what he’s intervening in. Quickly thrusting the criminal’s head against the car, the bearded flower shop owner tightens his arm’s grasp on the man’s neck, squeezing down and restricting any air flow as he pulls the daylight thief away from the car itself.

Kicking and grunting, the hooded stranger tries to free himself from the grasp of the Carrion patriarch, though no amount of his effort can prevent the rubber soles of his running shoes from being dragged across the sandy asphalt. Still barely making it to her feet, the woman does a quick check on the items that she’d initially sought out to defend from being taken before slamming the rolling door shut and hastily making her way into the driver’s seat.

Though he can speak, the criminal refuses to try and reason with his assailant, instead opting to continue the struggle that remains fruitless. As if he were having no trouble whatsoever, Andrew continues to casually stare onward as the woman slams her own door shut, turning the van into the reverse and stepping on the gas.

At a safe enough distance, the father- who’d only set out to buy a few seeds and a gardening tool to replace one he’d misplaced- watches the van turn in its retreat, affording him a momentary glance through the car’s rear window. With his eyes widening slightly, Andrew peers past his reflection in the glass to find a young, blonde girl’s face looking back at him, an expression of confusion as to what had almost just happened to her held toward the face of her saviour.

As quickly as it had pulled out, the minivan shifts its gears into drive and burns its rubber tires whilst skidding along the ground, desperately carried in the way of the lot’s exit by the lucky mother. Having never assumed a thing about the altercation prior to now, Andrew’s mind shifts its gears upon realising that what he’d thought was likely a theft had been more akin to an abduction, triggering a vengeful part of his mind that drives him to tighten his grasp on the criminal’s neck further.

Irate, the parent all-too-familiar with such an instance looks away from the minivan and at the person responsible for its hasty retreat. With wide eyes, the face of a black man that stares angrily into Andrew’s own visage provokes the small business owner into reigniting the flames of old demons.

Tossing what he’d originally carried in his free hand to the ground, Andrew balls his fingers into a fist and lays waste to the attempted kidnapper’s face, striking him directly in the nose before finally relinquishing his throat. With a thud, the unnamed criminal collapses to the ground and holds his nose for a brief moment, the following actions he takes being out of a place of self-preservation.

Shielding his features, the assailant watches Andrew kneel atop him, one hand taking the collar of his shirt whilst the other rains one blow after another into his face. Just the same as what the cashier who’d rung him up minutes earlier had become common with, the father wears a cold and distant stare as he pummels upon the defenceless citizen, who refuses to fight back against someone whom he gives up nearly seventy pounds and a six inches to.

Not satisfied with his attack, Andrew’s instincts take his hand toward the piece of metal he catches the sun’s reflection off of from the corner of his eye, his fingers finding their way around its handle before the sound of hurry emerges from his opposite side. “Stop! Get off of him!” the same friendly cashier exclaims as she hurries through the storefront’s exits, a second woman and another man calling out similar orders as they follow their younger colleague’s lead.

With a momentary glance toward the employees, Andrew takes notice of their arrival before staring at his opposite side, more interest carried with what he finds there. Resting in his hand and ready for use, the pruning shears aim their tip toward the neck of the handled criminal, prepared to lay in an even worse attack than the one that the store owner had threatened to perform with his own bare hands.

Hurriedly tossing the shears back toward his vehicle as if to dispose of them, Andrew releases his grasp of the collar to the man’s hood and climbs off of him. “Go ahead and hold this guy over until the emergency units show up” the father of two sighs, dismissively waving at the vile piece of human scum whilst collecting his bearings.

“Are you alright, sir!?” the same young cashier wonders aloud as the father steps away, returning to his car only to take notice of the claim itself, the inquiry prompting the man to turn back with confusion. “No! This psycho just attacked me!” the same bloody-faced criminal exclaims as the cashier kneels by his side, the reinforcements she’d brought along holding their hands out in a show of peace toward whom they appear to believe is in the wrong.

“Sir, we’ve already called the civilian police! Don’t go anywhere!” the fat, white man in a blue shirt pleads, his warnings not ushered in the direction of the would-be abductor, but instead at the father who’d come to his victim’s aid. Confused and at a loss, Andrew stares back at the large man whilst processing the plea that was ushered, finding it odd without realising why at first.

“Hold on, you...” Andrew stutters, watching the larger man draw closer with a peaceful demeanour, the equally-overweight woman who he’d run out alongside hiding behind him. “...You think I’m the bad guy here!?” the father questions aloud, standing only a few inches away from the hood of his own car, “this scumbag just tried to snatch a woman’s child in broad-fucking-daylight, and you think I’m the bad guy here!?”

Drawing closer, the large shop worker continues to display an oddly peaceful demeanour toward the supposed assailant, one that doesn’t convince the bearded father of much. As if unthreatened and slightly amused, Andrew steps forward with his eyebrows furrowed and slaps the obese employee across the face with enough force to knock him over, already having been enraged by the action he’d put a stop to, and now driven mad even further by the manner in which he’s being treated.

Holding an intense scowl, Andrew refocuses his eyes on the pair of younger people off to his left, the face of the would-be kidnapper wearing a smirk as if pleased to see such a display of aggression. Sickened to his core, the father shakes his head dismissively and reaches toward the ground, reclaiming his gardening tool before stepping back into the front seat of his car, paying no mind to the chaos that he intends to leave behind as he drives off.

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

Crossing her arms over the hardcover textbooks that she cradles against her chest, Liv ventures halfway down the corridor that leads to her locker, her eyes focusing on the corner that she’s turned to face the same result time after time again. Having begun to count her steps according to the pattern of the tiled floor that she walks upon, the girl masquerading as a special needs student steadies her breathing, keeping her visage bound for the ground as she nears the hallway’s end.

Though she knows what awaits her, the only effort Liv takes is to prepare for the landing that she’s set to endure, tightening her grasp of the books that she carries whilst keeping track of where her feet step. Trying to ease her expression so as not to show her assailants any glimpse of a brace, the teenager glues her eyes to the floor and begins rounding the corner, elbows ready to throw her materials away in the name of preventing her from falling on them.

For a brief second or two, alarm bells ring in the teenager’s head as they’d been trained to, signalling for the cue that her adversaries never miss the opportunity to leap upon. Upon the third second, Liv’s feet remain firmly pressed upon the floor and offered an open lane to her locker, the journey unimpeded by any expected-unexpected attack.

With surprise, the girl’s face allows a look of surprise to prevail as she turns around, looking away from the ground and toward the bathroom her bullies had been known to frequent, the space they’d grown used to occupying now sitting silent. “I’m glad to see you’re smartening up” a girl’s voice calls out from the direction of Liv’s locker, prompting her to turn with awe in the direction she’d initially set out to head in.

“I’m still not really sure how your autism works, but I always found it odd that you just kept falling for their trap” Derby remarks, the sight of her face bringing an immediate internal relief upon the bullied teenager. Standing in place, Liv stares in her friend’s direction before remembering to nod along in place to herself, repeating her acquaintance’s proclamation internally before speaking, remaining standing where she’d stopped.

“I expected them to push me” Liv answers simply and honestly, finally breaking free from her halt and progressing the rest of the way to her locker. “If you expect them to attack you, then why don’t you not let them attack you?” Derby inquires, her back pressing against the exterior of the storage unit that sits besides her special needs friends’ own.

Pressing her thumb against the door’s scanner, Liv watches her locker’s door gently pop open, allowing her to pull it free the rest of the way and stare forward as she bobs her head again. “I can’t fight them” the innocent student replies after a brief moment, following through on exchanging one set of textbooks in favour of another. “Sure, it’d probably be a bad idea to try and fight all three of them at once” Derby responds, shrugging off the supposed difficulty, “haven’t you ever wanted to?”

Going quiet for yet another moment as she collects the books she’s in need of, Liv repeats the question once in her head before attempting to answer, only for her lips to part without offering anything of value at first. Instead of speaking from the set of replies she’d trained herself to default to, the bullied girl stares into the dark confines of her locker as if they were reflective of the emotions that she conceals within herself, giving true consideration to the inquiry she’s paid.

“Fighting them would end bad” Liv replies simply, snapping out of her momentary haze as she follows through with her initial train of thought. Closing the metal door, the masquerading teenager turns around and stares toward the end of the corridor she’d anticipated walking down, prepared to journey ahead until her friend’s voice speaks further, holding her back from doing so.

“Hey, Liv... Hold up” Derby remarks, reaching out to take her pal by the arm and keep her from walking off, the bullied teenager turning back to face her. As an audience no less captivated than what she’s desired to be, Liv waits for her friend to follow through the bout of silence that is presented to her, unsure of how to fill it with anything more than the awkward hush that someone without the sense of make of it would.

“I won’t go into detail, but I left something of mine in this warehouse downtown and I can’t just simply go over and get it back” Derby explains, trying to conceal whatever information her friend will allow her to go without offering, “since you’re one of the only people in this school that I’m pretty sure I can trust, I was hoping you’d meet me there tonight and just hang out in one spot for a couple of minutes while I go get it?”

Without uttering a word, Liv stares into the face of her friend and parts her lips to speak, again feigning the process of considering what’s been asked of her before replying. “Okay” the girl replies, watching the slight pull back of Derby’s head present the young woman’s surprise at the ease in which she’d received her answer before continuing with her departure, walking off for her next class without so much as a peep from her disorderly peer.

|

Entering the large foyer to her home as she steps through the front door, Coleen looks around the spacious interior she walks into whilst slowly letting her knapsack slide from over her right shoulder. “I’m home!” the teen girl calls out, her voice carried throughout the building’s interior in the form of an echo, intended for any set of ears willing to offer a reply. For a few seconds, all that meets the blonde bully is the silence of an empty household, as unresponsive as it is unwelcoming.

Pressing her lips together and forming a frown, Coleen lets her head hang as she kicks off her shoes and walks along tiled floors for the kitchen that awaits her just a few dozen feet ahead. With her knapsack in hand, the clever rapscallion steps around a pair of corners with her eyes following the lines that stretch along the floor. “You were supposed to be home an hour ago” a woman in a pink tracksuit speaks aloud, having waited until the teenage girl had entered to talk.

Stopping in her tracks, Coleen stares ahead with a look of surprise whilst the woman who’d halted her with the sound of a voice continues to pack leaves of kale into a blender. “I had to drop L’ and E’ off at home first” the teenage girl replies, resuming her approach to the table off to the kitchen’s side, some books having already been left aside from the prior night.

“What did I tell you about letting me know you were going to be late, Coleen?” the woman questions aloud, still yet to remove her focus from the beverage she’s preparing, let alone to look the girl in the eyes. “I sent you a text before I got in the car” Coleen responds, reassuring the older woman of her efforts with a slightly defensive tone, “I don’t know what more you want from me.”

“I’d like you to be home when I want you home” the woman in the offensively pink attire responds, slamming her fist against the top of the compact blender and filling the air with the sound of mechanical crumbling. For a few seconds, the noise is all that either girl can hear, neither of their voices capable of breaching the atrocity of sound, and therefore neither make the attempt.

After a few moments, the older woman’s hand wraps around the base of the cup-like shell she’d poured ingredients into, releasing it from the lock the machine had placed it in and allowing a sense of comfort to come over the air once more. “I have somewhere very important to be tonight, and I expect you to be here when I tell you to be” she commands, making her thoughts clear to the younger woman.

“Alright, mom. I’m sorry” Coleen responds, carrying the tone of someone who’d heard the complaints many times prior to such an extent that they’ve become resoundingly clear, almost as guaranteed as death and taxes. “‘I’m sorry’ is not good enough” the girl’s mother replies, unscrewing the cap to her blender’s shell before dumping a load of green liquid into a plastic, takeaway coffee cup.

“I already told you that I texted you, I don’t know what more you want from me!” Coleen retorts, her displeased tone catching the ear of her mother with ease, allowing the daughter to watch her parent spin around and face her for the first time since she’d returned home. “I want you to do what I tell you to do, have I not made that clear?” the pink tracksuit-wearing matriarch replies, leaning her back against the countertop she’d prepared her drink atop.

“So you want me to just tell them to fuck off and find their own ways home!?” Coleen wonders aloud, growing more dissatisfied with what’s being told to her. “Your friends are not my children. Whatever they do is not my problem or my business” the woman’s mother replies, the plastic cup she holds baring the name of ‘Susana’ across its white, sticky note receipt, “when I tell you to be home at a specific time, I want you home at that time. No exceptions.”

“That’s ridiculous” the teenager rebukes, setting her knapsack along the kitchen’s tabletop whilst continuing the conversation from her end. “Excuse me?” Susana questions aloud, taken aback by the defiance displayed through the reaction in her child’s reply. “Why would you not want me to help my friends get home!?” Coleen challenges, curious to the rationale that- at the very least- doesn’t make moral sense to her.

“Because it keeps you from obeying my orders” Susana responds, drawing a further ire from her daughter that becomes more apparent in the younger woman’s visage. “That makes no sense! Your orders are supposed to be more important than helping my friends get home safe!?” Coleen questions aloud, scoffing at the notion that she’s refused the chance to further elaborate upon, watching her mother’s finger lift to keep her from speaking a word further.

“I don’t care how those dirty little sluts get home. Your responsibility is not being their chauffeur, it’s doing what I tell you to do” Susana responds, placing her lips around the paper straw that protrudes from the lid of her smoothie. Squinting at the words in which her mother had used, Coleen looks into the woman’s face with disgust before crossing her arms, easing the offended expression that she wears whilst growing more inherently confrontational.

“You know, maybe if you told dad that last part a few more times, he would’ve actually stayed instead of fucking off to some broad a lot easier to deal with” Coleen fights back verbally, watching the bite that she takes in her mother’s direction provide a spark that the divorcee immediately acts on. Angered, Susana steps forward and swings her hand through the air, slapping her daughter across the face before shoving her back, pushing her into the open seat she’d yet to take.

“You watch your fucking mouth with me, you little brat!” the older woman exclaims, watching her daughter tumble back whilst holding an outstretched finger toward her. Having offered as much of a warning as she’s willing to give, the smoothie-holding mother aggravatedly turns away from her offspring and makes for the same exit Coleen had used to enter, disappearing as quickly as the younger woman had entered.

With one arm instinctively reaching for an edge of the kitchen’s table for support, the teenager watches her parent step away from the now-empty room with a scowl, her nostrils flaring and eyebrows furrowing whilst she seethes quietly.

|

Watching cars drive themselves along the street she stands beside as day has turned to night, a young woman in a fleece jacket rubs her hands together to keep warm, staring down each side of the road that she waits on. “Goddamn, Liv... Where the hell are you?” Derby whispers to herself, forced to cross her arms to keep warmth as her breath clouds the air in front of herself, forced to hold out hope that the girl she’d asked for the company of will soon arrive.

Growing impatient the longer that she’s forced to endure the cold on her lonesome, Derby begins contemplating her options at hand, already at the scene she needs to be in, though without the support she requires to make the journey one she can take confidence in. “Fuck it” the rebellious teenager proclaims, rubbing her palms against the denim of her jeans in an effort to gain some momentary warmth in them, immediately eying the fence that she must scale.

Within minutes, Derby finds herself having gone from standing out in the cold and waiting for reinforcements to entering an oddly warm warehouse without support to fall back on. Trying to keep her footsteps unheard and her presence unnoticed, the troublemaker stays low to the ground as she closes in on a more well-lit area of the abandoned building with only one goal in mind, that motivating destination proving to be the centre of her attention.

Nearing the end of a spacious corridor that leads to the seemingly populated warehouse’s main floor, Derby begins peering around the left-most corner with hopes of catching a glimpse at who surrounds the central barrel fire she expects to find, knowing well enough to stay away from their view. Extending an arm out toward the right-most wall, the trespassing teenager struggles to find anyone where she anticipates them residing, hoping that the further she walks, the better her view will become.

In an instant, the cautious hush the young woman keeps herself to is thrown out the window as a shove against her back takes her to the floor, immediately rendering her cover blown. Slamming against the asphalt ground, Derby’s palms press against the rough terrain as she tries to collect her bearings, taking immediate notice of a pair of shoes that stand on either of her sides.

“I should really stop giving you more credit than you’re due” Coleen remarks, joining the pair of shoes in surrounding the woman that invades their gathering spot with a phone in her hand, “you always prove that you’re just the same, stupid girl that you’ve always been.”

“Give it back” Derby grunts, pushing herself off the ground whilst staring at the blonde girl across from her, eying the cell phone that resides within her dominant hand. Instead of following through with the girl’s request, Coleen turns her back to the rebellious teenager whilst Leila and Elva strike at their adversary’s back, driving her to the ground before kicking her in the sides and the head.

Outmatched and overpowered, Derby’s only option is to shield her vital areas whilst her enemies take out their aggressions upon her, following the order of their apparent shot-caller, who walks in the opposite direction of the beatdown. “Thank god for face I.D” Coleen mutters beneath her breath, walking toward the open fire that she’d initially joined her friends alongside whilst the attack persists behind her.

With a few swipes of her fingers, the teenage bully wipes a lengthy video that had been captured on the mobile device from its system, deleting it with a few easy taps of the screen. “Bring her over here!” Coleen calls out, prompting her friends to hold off on the beating that they deliver to the girl who’d attempted to do them wrong, instead commanding that they take her by the arms and drag her to the place in which the phone’s camera had been pointed toward.

Struggling against the efforts of her aggressors, Derby tries to rip herself free from the reach of the girls who retain their control over the situation at hand, forcing their teenage foe across the rough terrain and toward the open flames. Still refusing to cooperate, the recalcitrant, unwelcome visitor feels the screen of her phone shatter against her forehead as Coleen takes her shot at the woman, breaking the device just as she’d set out to.

Kneeling on the ground as Derby grimaces in pain, the blonde bully takes her adversary by the chin and forces their eyes together, refusing to speak until the wounded teenager’s attention is devoted to her. “I’ve got too much shit going on in my life to deal with an asshole like you trying to bust me for drinking a little bit of booze, alright?” Coleen questions, making her stance clear beyond misinterpretation, “the next time you try to pull some shit like this, I won’t tell them to stop.”

Without anything more to say, the bully gestures for her friends to relinquish the rebel from their grasp before discarding the broken phone in the open firepit, allowing the flames to take care of what the strike she’d taken at its owner had failed to finish. “Come on, C’- let’s get out of here” Elva remarks, nudging her friend on the arm whilst retreating, the first to attempt a departure from the scene that her friends follow suit with, hurrying away from the abandoned lot.

Within a few seconds, the warehouse is emptied of any presence aside from that of the teenager at its centre, groaning in pain at the attack she’d been forced to endure. “Fuck” Derby grunts, holding her abdomen and sides whilst rolling onto her back, staring at the building’s gap-filled ceiling as she tries to collect herself, letting the events she’d just become the victim of settle whilst her failure becomes difficult to ignore, the flames that rise a few feet away eating at her phone.

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>Sat, 19 Jul 2025 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.officialpacer1.com/season-3-2025/s3-e1-my-sisters-monster​Season 3 Premiere

“Urgh!” a teenage girl grunts, her sock-covered feet leaping off the hardwood floor as her hand stretches toward the ceiling, reaching for a piece of rope that hangs from a panel above. Failing on her first attempt, the girl continues to lunge for the heavens, falling short time and time again, though refusing to give up. In the meanwhile, the space that resides above sits within the darkness that it’s become accustomed to, visited less frequently over the years by those who live beneath it.

Finally, the attic’s stuffy and unlit quarters are bathed in the light from the hallway below, its entry pulled out for the first time in years. Visited by one of the youngest residents of the home, the sky parlour resides just as it had been left the last time it was travelled within, allowing the teenage girl to climb its ladder and wander throughout. Diving into one box after another, the young soul rummages through the variety of belongings that had been stuffed away, left to collect dust.

Without a word, the girl journeys through each cardboard container before finally catching the glimpse of a much smaller box in the farthest and cosiest corner of the room, its exterior painted in a pattern of black and white. Crawling over to the mostly-desolate space within the attic, the teenager pulls off the lid that had kept what’s inside contained and nods her head approvingly, pleased to find what she’d set out to look for.

“It’s been seven and a half years” the young woman speaks whilst sitting at a chair she’d rolled away from her desk, which occupies the back corner of her bedroom. Having climbed down from the sky parlour with the box under her arm, the teenager folds the ladder back to where it had slidden from and sends the attic’s door back toward the ceiling, walking off as if she’d never journeyed upward in the first place.

“After everything that happened, I would’ve thought my father had chosen to get rid of this thing” the teenager persists, staring forward with a blank expression on her face, her lips parted ever so slightly. Having eventually returned to her bedroom earlier in the day, the girl gently pulls the box away from her side and places it upon the foot of her bed, opening the shoebox’s lid to find a camera, a microphone and various tapes that had been stored alongside it.

“I don’t mean to sound judgemental. I know he just wanted to move on” the girl continues, able to barely make out her own tiny reflection in the lens that faces her, the microphone she’d mounted just above it having been cleaned off along the way. “I guess I’m still just sad about how he tried to move on” she continues, spilling the thoughts she’d stored within her mind no different than the camera had been in the attic, not only knowing they’re being recorded, but wanting them to be.

“I’m a junior now. That’s how long it’s been...” the girl carries on, her hands coupled in her lap as she nods, trying to feign a smile that fails to retain its place upon her visage, “...the same grade my big sister was in when all of it happened.”

Having originally stored the film equipment beneath her bed so she could go about her day as if it were any other, the teenager inevitably found herself sitting at the centre of her comfortable bedroom, looking into the same lens that’s recorded some of her family’s greatest pain. “I never asked him because I just figured he’d want to forget it existed, but I always had the hunch that he just hid this thing away and tried to move forward” she carries on, speaking freely, “I finally found it.”

Having struggled through the process of hooking up the machine to the stands that had been left tied together just beside the box it had been stored within, the teenager eventually found herself sliding a tape into the camera and sitting before it just as her sibling had. “And I’m really glad that I found it when I did” the girl continues to speak, looking into the lens as her distant face turns into one of concern and worry, “I don’t know how much longer I could’ve gone on if I hadn’t.”

With the push of a button, the teen girl had wandered across the room from the recording device and taken a gracious seat before its viewfinder, sitting with dignity in grace in lieu of the comfort that evades her. “I just wanted to say everything that I could while I had the chance” she confesses, biting her bottom lip after every sentence before staring toward the ground, unable to process one chain of words before she’d successfully done the same for the prior stretch.

“Please state your name, your date of birth and age, today’s date, and the generation you belong to” a voice she’s familiar with utters through the screen of her phone, pumped through the speakers that had been built into the display. Pressing the ‘pause’ button at the centre of the panel before clearing her throat, another intense glare held toward the floor as she clears her mind, repeating the chain of directions in her mind so as to gather a full recollection of them.

With a deep breath in through her nostrils, the girl’s eyelids close for a moment before inevitably pulling away, allowing her sight to take directly to the lens with a calm relief. “My name is Olivia Carrion-Kirkpatrick, but everyone that I know calls me ‘Liv’” the teenager introduces herself, nodding her head as she repeats the following lines of direction in her head, speaking as clearly as she can so the microphone has no difficulty in picking up her voice.

“I was born on the twenty-seventh of October, in the year twenty-twenty” she carries forward, trying to ease her expression so the strife that the remarks leave her with is less noticeable, “today is the fifteenth of November, in the year twenty thirty-eight.” With another pause, Olivia bobs her head repeatedly as her calmed breaths begin to hurry, turning to a frenzy for the moment that it takes the girl to reclaim her composure, recalling the directions as finishing as she’d desired.

“I’m a part of Generation Alpha” she concludes.

Beyond the door to her room, the hallways of her childhood home appear as dark as the attic she’d entered earlier was, a bedroom near one end of the hall occupied by two people, whilst one just a short ways from it is occupied by one other. “Seven years ago, my sister was arrested for really bad things” Liv continues to recollect, the knowledge that all other occupants of the home are asleep is enough to free her from the burden of being caught interacting with her sister’s machine.

“She killed people. She killed her mom and a man that had been investigating her” the girl continues speaking, bobbing her head again as she considers her various remarks before uttering them aloud, almost as if she were proof-reading a script on the fly. “She killed another girl too. It was a really nice person’s girlfriend” Olivia persists, engaging with the camera with a sombre expression, “she killed a police officer too. When she tried running away, the nice person went after her.”

Staring at the ground, the girl stays quiet for a moment as she thinks back to that night, unable to remember much more than what her surroundings looked like, incapable of recalling a clear picture. “The nice person died that night too... His name was Caden” Liv proceeds, the thumbs on her folded hands dancing around each other as she continues to speak, eventually slowing to a full stop the longer she speaks.

“Dad was really sad for a long time, and mom was helping him and me” the girl continues to speak, her eyes trailing upward and back toward the lens as she processes her speech. “They got married a few years ago and had a baby” Liv proceeds to speak, furrowing her eyebrows as she leans further back into her seat, taking slight comfort in the feeling of the cushion that her back presses into, “my baby brother Galen was born on the seventh of September, in the year twenty thirty-four.”

Bowing her head again, Liv collects her thoughts before speaking further, eyes glued to the rug at the centre of her room, feeling the fabrics of it between her toes and across her soles, that sensation also brings her some comfort. “I haven’t seen my sister Sophie since that night... The twenty second of May, twenty thirty-one” the girl continues, her sorrowful frown now caught by the camera across the room, “I remember her face and I remember her voice.”

Pressing her lips together, Liv lifts her chin to the camera and pulls in a deep breath of air as her eyes widen slightly, her visage becoming less saddened. “I was looking for this camera because I remember my mom and dad talking about how my sister Sophie used it” the girl confesses, a more hopeful look carried through the weight of her eyes, “I know why my sister Sophie used it and I know what she said on it. I’ve watched the video of it every day since the last time I saw her.”

Staring directly into the lens, Liv continues to bob her head as she repeats the lines that she wishes to speak within her head, keeping them contained during their trial run before letting loose when confident enough. “But I’m not using the camera because of what happened to her...” she admits, pausing for a moment as another bout of sorrow comes over her, reflected in the frown that appears on her face, “...I’m using the camera because of what’s happening to me.”

= Generation Alpha is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onwards =

> Tuesday, 16th November 2038 <

“Found guilty on three out of the four counts, Sophie Amari was sentenced to forty years in prison in 2032” the voice of a man speaks through one earbud, reaching the ear of the young woman who’d been left scarred by the subject of his video. “Eligible for parole after fifteen years, Sophie will be able to leave prison- at the earliest- in 2047 at the age of thirty one years old.”

Concealing the earbud by resting the side of her head against her hand, Liv sits at the desk near the back of her classroom, staring at a piece of paper with red markings all over it. “Psst” a girl discreetly whispers, leaning to the left of her seat and hiding her face from the teacher. Ushered for, Liv slowly guides her face toward her classmate’s direction, waiting for the young woman to explain her gesture.

“What’s up?” the classmate wonders, jutting her chin toward her contemporary whilst trying to capture a look at the young woman’s paper, the first clear glance that she earns leaving her to pull in a deep breath through her teeth. “A seventy four? Geez” the nosy peer remarks, looking past her blonde-streaked brown hair to reclaim her own paper, showing its face to the woman beside her, “that’s a whole ten points better than me.”

“Ladies, you’re not supposed to be showing your tests around” Mrs. Danielson proclaims from the front of the room, just barely capturing a look at the paper held outward. “I just wanted to make sure we had identical tests, Mrs. Danielson!” the girl with a sixty four responds with a smile, a slight adjustment made to the sleeve of her tattered red t-shirt, the short cuff along her left arm purposefully styled to be held together only by a set of four bobby pins.

“You know there’d be no discrepancies in the tests, Derby” Mrs. Danielson replies, dismissing the claim as one of unsatisfying prestige, watching the miscreant’s hands present themselves in surrender. “The two of you girls need to study harder” the teacher persists, returning to her desk whilst gesturing to a blonde girl in the front of the room, her preppy smile accompanied by a pink sweater, a white blouse and a pink skirt, “you two should study harder like Coleen here.”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Danielson... I think I’d rather throw myself out of a window” Derby retorts, earning an eye roll from the teacher and a scoff from the positive student at the front of the room. “Out you go, Derby” the teacher sighs with a defeated breath, reclaiming her seat whilst the rebellious student steps out of her own, aware of the procedure as if it's already been run through countless times before.

“See you tomorrow, Mrs. Danielson” Derby responds, taking her textbook and the results of her test into her possession before leaving the room, waving goodbye to the teacher who meets her with the same gesture. “Alright, class... I want the rest of you turning to the sixty fifth page of your textbooks” Mrs. Danielson proclaims, watching her in-person class of seven students flip their pages in real time whilst the group of at-home students three times larger follow suit.

After thirty more minutes, the school’s bell rings with haste and leads its students into the next period, filling the halls with whatever students actually care to attend in-person. With a more brisk pace than her peers, Liv ventures through the door to Mrs. Danielson’s classroom and turns toward the direction of her locker, minding her own business and cradling the textbook against her chest with only the intention of preparing for her next class.

Slightly quicker than her contemporaries, Liv begins to turn a corner, eyes beginning to settle upon the row of lockers that hers resides within before falling to the floor, her leg swept out from beneath her mid-step. Amused with their actions, three girls- two blondes and a light-haired brunette- huddle within the entrance to the school’s bathroom and laugh at the sight of their classmate’s collision with the ground.

“Oh my god, she really never learns!” one of the girls proclaims in awe, not having anticipated such ease in sending the student into the tiled floor, though such a result is what found her. “Leila, how many times do I have to tell you... She falls for it over and over and over again!” Coleen proclaims, standing in the middle of the two girls with as much glee in the sight, “I swear, she never wises up to it! It’s been- like- two whole weeks and she never sees it coming!”

Shaking her wrist as it presents her with pain, Olivia uses her free hand to push herself off the ground, gradually returning to her feet whilst the three girls stand over her, continuing to revel in their actions. Providing no response, the insulted teenage girl reclaims the loose papers of her test and reaches for her textbook, only for both it and her hand to be kicked away by one of the girls.

“Crawl for it, retard” Coleen quips, standing over Olivia as she leans over, shaking off the hand that had been kicked before dragging herself along the ground and toward the textbook. Leaving no room between herself and the victim of her actions, the foremost girl- who the assaulted teen had been told to study more like- follows the knelt-over student toward the hardcover book and kicks it for a second time, sliding it further away from grasp.

“Are you gonna pick it up, stupid?” Coleen jokes, watching the special needs teenager brush off the girls’ actions and once more focus her attention upon recovering the book. “Come on, retard! Pick up your-!” the bullying blonde girl proclaims again, continuing to follow Olivia along the ground before feeling a pair of hands shove their weight against her chest, sending the preppy creatine flying to the ground.

“How’s that feel, you bubblegum twat!?” Derby shouts, watching Coleen topple backward as the weight of her push sends the bully crashing to the floor, something that both of the girls who’d also plotted the attack take displeasure in. “The fuck are you doing, Derby!?” the light-haired brunette exclaims, stepping ahead of her friend and drawing closer to the rebellious student, only to receive a shove of her own- this one sending her crashing into her other blonde friend.

“You’re all gonna leave Liv alone, or I’m gonna make sure all three of you are crawling for me!” Derby grunts, passing a glance toward the girl she sticks up for, watching the special needs teenager finally reclaim her textbook. “You’re gonna fucking regret this, you-!” Coleen calls out, interrupted by the loud voice of an approaching teacher, who takes notice of the forward stance the tattered shirt-wearing student wears as to only mean one thing.

“Coleen, Leila, Elva, Derby!” the man exclaims, watching Liv finally climb off the floor just a few paces away, the previously attacked student opting to keep her head down and continue her original intentions of returning to her locker. “Do we have a problem here, girls?” the man inquires, his attention-commanding voice prompting all four classmates to put an end to their squabble- at least for the time being.

“Yes, Mr. Calhoun!” Coleen exclaims, stretching her sweater outward just slightly to dust off whatever dirt had accumulated on it, “Derby just straight up pushed me onto the ground and threatened Leila and Elva!” With a smirk, Derby bows her head, licks her lip, and steps forward once more, laughing at the complainant student before throwing her weight forward again, shoving the preppy bully to the ground for a second- even harder- instance.

Stepping forward, Leila and Elva immediately attempt to reciprocate the attack upon their rebellious adversary, only to be thwarted by the frame of the interrupting teacher, who steps ahead of them and shoves Derby in the way which she’d entered from. “Go to the principal’s office now!” Calhoun barks, pointing his finger in the direction of her superior, watching the rebellious teen lift her hands in surrender and turn away, headed for the demanded destination.

Along her way, Derby looks at the back of Liv’s head, watching the girl carry on with exchanging one textbook in favour of another, nodding to herself with a smile as she carries along her way. Trying to dismiss the assault that she’d been the victim of, the embarrassed student carries on with her duties, pulling a pair of thin, soft-cover books and a notebook free from the thin storage compartment before closing it and walking back toward the teacher and her assailants, passing without a word.

|

Scratching at an itch that rests over her right eyebrow with one hand whilst folding baby clothes with the other, the lonely inhabitant of an infant’s room suddenly catches the opening of the front door one level below. Redirecting herself to the room’s exit, the woman steps into the hallway and draws closer toward the home’s central staircase, glancing out at the main foyer as a quiet student kicks off her shoes and closes the house’s entrance.

“Welcome home, Liv” Elaine mutters in a sweet and compassionate voice from the top of the steps, watching the girl retrieve the knapsack she’d carefully placed on the ground in an effort of freeing her hands. “Thank you” Olivia quickly replies, speaking the same response that she’d trained herself to offer upon the greeting she’s paid, looking toward the bottom-most step as she draws closer to it.

“How was your day, sweetheart?” Elaine inquires, one hand pressing against the corner of the wall at one side of the staircase, watching her step daughter ascend one foot at a time. “Good” Olivia again hastily responds, another reply she’s trained herself to offer on command. With a subtle look toward the ground, the previously busy mother watches the older sister of her own son match the same floor of the home as she does before taking to her room without another word.

With the slightest expression of disappointment, Elaine sighs beneath her breath whilst watching the teenager wander away, closing the door to her room upon entry and burying herself into her schoolwork for the rest of the evening. Pressing her lips together, the mother turns her focus back toward the room she’d just stepped out of and carries on with her original efforts, the disappointment she carries minimal, but still present enough to acknowledge.

|

“...But I’m not using the camera because of what happened to her...” Liv admits, pausing for a moment as another bout of sorrow comes over her, reflected in the frown that appears on her face, “...I’m using the camera because of what’s happening to me.” Pulling her eyes to the digital clock that sits atop a dresser in the corner of the room, the sleepless student finds herself looking into a four digit number far greater than the one she was meant to be asleep by.

“There’s a girl in my class named Coleen, and she has two friends- Leila and Elva” the tired, yet motivated teenager explains, looking firmly into the lens of the machine across from her. “They call me a retard and other names every day. They tease me and push me almost every day” Liv proceeds, taking a momentary glance toward a blank space along her wall, looking across it- from one side to the other- as if there were words she were pulling off of its rose-coloured painted surface.

“When they harass me, I just let them. They know that I’m not going to fight them back...” Liv proceeds, setting her sights back on the lens as her demeanour changes, “...because that’s what I want them to think.”

Patting the seat of her chair with the base of her hand, Liv leaves the camera’s view for a moment whilst walking off for the corner of her room, allowing the central shot to remain empty for a few seconds before returning. “After everything happened with Sophie, my stepmom- Ms. Kirkpatrick- convinced my dad and I to join her in going to therapy” the teenager persists, “they stopped once mom got pregnant with Galen, but that’s not why the therapy was important for me.”

Between her stretched-apart index finger and thumb, Olivia holds a white prescription bottle toward the camera, aware that it cannot accurately focus in on the black lettering upon its face. “The therapist referred me to a special therapist that deals with special needs children. While I was there, I was prescribed this drug. It’d just come out for prescription use, and it was covered by our insurance” the teenager continues, pulling the bottle closer to her, “it’s used to treat my autism.”

Eventually reaching toward the ground and placing the prescription bottle down, Liv refocuses her line of sight on the camera’s lens. “After I started taking it, everything felt a lot better than it’d used to. I was concentrating better, I was able to control myself and my urges more, and I- for the most part- don’t feel like I have autism anymore” the teenager continues, rubbing her palms together anxiously, “but, as far as my dad and stepmom are concerned, my improvements were minimal.”

Swallowing a load of spit that forms in her oddly dry mouth, Liv pulls her hands apart and presses them against her thighs, nervously rubbing them against the fabric of her pants. “They weren’t enough for me to be considered one of the twenty percent of ‘cured people’ that doctors think are mostly fixed for lack of a better word, but they were just enough to make sure I kept getting it prescribed to me.”

With a gentle swat at her own thighs, Liv pushes herself back into her seat as the anxiety of even explaining this on any form of recording persists. “I’m taking a risk on filming this, because no one can find out. I’ve kept the patterns that I used to do before going so much that- sometimes- I just keep going along with it when I don’t need to” the teenager explains, “take that moment I had a couple minutes ago where I looked at the wall and tried to read words from it.”

With a slight smile out of pleasure to no longer be dependent on actions like that to make sense of things, Olivia continues to spill her soul to the lens that watches on like a hawk. “I didn’t need to do that! But I did it because I just got so wrapped up in the pretend of it all that it just comes naturally” she proceeds, pulling in a deep breath before letting out a sigh, “anyway- back to the point. The reason that I need this drug is because it kinda feels like it slows down time for me.”

Waving her hand at the lens, the girl dismisses the idea that she gets her high off the dulled pace of life. “Don’t worry, I’m not an addict. The thing about time feeling like it’s slowed is because it gives me an extra few seconds to react to things” Liv carries on, shaking her head whilst looking off to the side, trying to ensure her words remain coherent and understood properly, “those things- while not limited to just this- include not going off on Coleen and the others.”

Coupling her hands together at the edge to the seat she occupies, Liv wraps her fingers around the lip of the chair and leans forward slightly whilst nibbling upon her bottom lip. “I have a friend- if you can even really call her a friend- named Derby. She’s this really anti-authority chick who has as big of a problem with Coleen and her friends as I do” the girl continues to confess, starting to reach the point she’s been concerned to draw toward, “Derby comes to my defence when I need it.”

Though a smile forms in the corner of the girl’s mouth, the student’s eyes trail toward the ground as she pauses for a moment, pulling in another heavy breath before uttering the words that sit at the tip of her tongue. “I guess- because of that- I’d call Derby a friend. And I’m glad that Derby’s there when I need her to be. I’m glad that- when someone needs to put Coleen in her place- it’s Derby doing the dirty work...” Liv concludes, staring sorrowfully, “...because I don’t trust myself.”

Though the momentary joy from seconds earlier has come and gone, the optimistic expression in the girl’s face accompanies the concerning explanation she offers, one that no pleasure is taken in. 

“The first time Coleen ever talked to me, she said that Sophie was a freak and I would’ve ended up like a psycho- just like her- if I wasn’t autistic” Liv proceeds, a brief squint held in her eye as she recalls the event, “I hadn’t gotten a new prescription in that week, and since the drug didn’t seem to be doing that much for me, dad didn’t see much of a hurry in getting the new one in.”

Clearing her throat, Liv sits with her thoughts for a moment before hanging her head, still displeased to be saying any of this, but she forces herself to follow through on it knowing that there’s an importance for what she says to be documented. “For that entire week, every time I heard her voice, it made me think of all kinds of ways that I could hurt her... All the ways that I could...” she continues, stuttering for just a moment as she shakes her head, “...that I could kill her.”

With her bottom lip quivering, the nail on Liv’s thumb begins dragging along the fake hardwood finish to the edge of her chair’s surface, clearly so incredibly anxious that the level of its effects can only escalate. “That week, there was one opportunity that I had to- well, you know- without being caught” the girl admits, still looking to the ground as her breathing gets slightly off-kilter, “she was ripping up a paper and throwing it in the toilet in one of the bathroom stalls... all alone.”

As if it had just happened yesterday, Liv closes her eyes and pictures the scene that still appears fresh in her mind, unwavering and inescapable. “I lost all control” she concedes, recalling the tears that Coleen had been crying in that moment and the anger that it had built within herself. Envisioning the way in which she’d taken her bully’s hair within her fingers and pulled her head back, the secretive teenage soul winces at the memory that she’s left to reimagine.

“I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back. I punched her in the back of the head and pushed her against the wall that the toilet sat against” Liv confesses, clearly wanting to break down into tears as she forces herself to endure the anamnesis. “I watched her hit the wall and fall down. She kinda just kept limply toppling further down until she was slumped over on the left side of the seat” the girl persists, stopping at nothing to explain herself, “I didn’t know what else to do, so I ran.”

Propping her eyes apart once more, Liv wipes the tears that had formed on the lower lids whilst staring off into the distance, trying to reclaim her composure. “I never heard anything after that. Coleen missed the rest of the classes I had with her that day, then she missed the rest of the week, and then she just came back” the distraught and emotionally scarred girl recalls, “she came to class, sat down, talked to Leila and Elva like always, and that was it. No one found out I attacked her.”

Sniffling and again fighting to clear her throat, Liv continues to speak, aware that what’s been said now cannot be taken unless the tape it was recorded upon is destroyed- something she has no intention of doing. “Even though I did that, the only thing Coleen’s ever known me for is being the retard with the serial killer sister” the teenager confesses, shaking her head in further declination, “she never suspected a thing from me. Even before that day, Derby always did what I would want to.”

Recording every last second, the camera’s lens watches the subject of its filming look further into it and continue speaking. “The next week, I got my pills and those extra seconds they gave me kept those thoughts out of my head. Ever since then, I haven’t missed a single day. I’ve done everything in my power to make sure my dad- or my stepmom- have all the boxes checked to make sure I get them on time and when I’m supposed to.”

Letting out a deep exhale, Liv grinds her palms into her pants again as she faces the ground once more, her strands of hair falling over her face. “But the thing is that I still wish I could kill Coleen. The pills keep me from thinking about it all day and night or actually acting on it, but that wasn’t always the case” the girl admits, the cause of her growing worries becoming ever more present, “and if the effect that I get from these pills is slowly wearing off, it might just be...”

Falling silent once more, the girl anxiously sits with her thoughts as they reach the summit of their point, ascending to the highest peak that they have to offer with great fears of what comes about actually finding their way to the very top. “...It might just be a matter of time before I do something that there’s no coming back from.”

Her stare becoming cold and bleak, Liv refocuses upon the miniature and weirdly-shaped reflection of herself in the lens’ centre, allowing the weight on her chest to find its way to freedom. “I need to document this the way Sophie did. In a strange way, the things Sophie didn’t say in that documentary she filmed with Caden and dad provided some of her victims with clarity...” the girl concedes, coming to terms with the fears that she hides, “I want my victims to have that same chance.”

Quickly shaking her head and waving her hand at the camera, Liv attempts to clarify her statement, leaving little up for interpretation. “It’s not like I expect there to be or want there to be. I just know that I’m afraid of the thing that I’m afraid of, and if the worst case scenario happens, I want to leave something behind that at least tries to do some good. And that good starts with confessing that...” the girl concludes, wearing a look of shame on her face as she lets out a defeated sigh.

“...I think I’m becoming the same monster as my sister.”

== Generation Alpha ==

]]>