YEAR 2000 LD--
A dark lab, glowing screens, a whisper.
"Hmm…It's not ready…not yet."
An old, run-down building. A sign with faded letters: Team Griffon. A man.
He was old, with brown-black hair with streaks of white. He had a hawk-nose with piercing blue eyes, a mustache, a beard, and thick eyebrows. Like most scientists, he wore a plain, white lab coat. His name was Dr. Henry Johnson, a plain, uninteresting name. A name, however, that would become famous after his death, thousands of thousands of thousands of years in the future.
He would be the man to create a name that would be feared. A name to be whispered and not spoken, a name that would strike fear into people's hearts. Griffothos.
But, in spite of all this, Dr. Henry Johnson was not what you would call, the face of evil. He was a doctor, a scientist. He and his team would discover the means of creating another race of beings. A race of beings that lived underground. They would be called the inferiai. In the world of Algaesia, the inferiai would toil and the humans would benefit. But this was not what you might think. You might think that the humans had it easy, but you are terribly wrong.
Dr. Johnson cleared his throat. He stood in front of a room full of expectant men, fifty-one in all. They were all dedicated scientists and believed in the good of society. He cleared his throat again and finally spoke.
"Men, this is the final grant the government will provide us. This is it. We must use it wisely. Fredrick, take six of the best men with you to experimental room, number three. I will join you shortly. Everyone else, you know the routine."
The room was filled with a shocked silence. The Doctor would work side by side with them? This was unheard of. He was the person who stayed in his office monitoring their progress with computers, researching, creating complex plans and long strings of incomprehensible formulas, and dealt with the government.
The men finally pulled themselves together. Chairs dragged against the once-white floor. Fredrick called out,
"Okay…Lee, Smith, Brown, Yamala, and uh…Yorik…Let me see. Um…Hendrick?"
Dr. Johnson gave a nod of approval and together the men trooped into the room marked with the number "3". The other men gave sighs of disapproval and dark mutters as they sorted themselves out into the other nine rooms.
Two days later, a man named Gregory Blake was promoted. He was now allowed to come into room three. Dr. Johnson smiled as he talked with Blake. Blake nodded but did not smile. The other men were on lunch break. Blake had finished his meal first, unfortunately.
"Blake and I shall proceed first into the experimental rooms. The members of room three"-he glanced purposely at the seven others-"will also join me. The rest of you may take ten minutes until you return to your positions," ordered the Doctor.
Fredrick stood and the six others followed his example. The nine men disappeared once more into room three.
Gregory Blake did not return home that day. Dr. Johnson sent an email to his worried wife, explaining he was still at the lab and needed to stay for a while. His wife, Hillary, did not accept this explanation.
Six days later, at two in the afternoon, Gregory Blake was dropped off by a black car in front of his house. He got out and shut the car door. Dr. Johnson, in the driver seat, whispered to him and then promptly drove off.
Blake walked to his front door and knocked and knocked. His wife was not home. That morning, she had left for work, on the edge of a nervous breakdown. When she returned at five thirty, Blake was still knocking and his knuckles were red and raw. She led him into the house and broke down sobbing at her husband's zombie-like state.
Dr. Johnson came to Mrs. Blake the next morning.
"Mrs. Blake, please, calm down. There is a reasonable explanation for your husband's behavior. He has been injected with a fluid that Team Griffon has created," Dr. Johnson comforted. "Do not worry. In fact, why don't you and your husband come with me?"
She walked into the car trembling, leading her husband by his hand. The car door slammed and the black car drove off to the laboratory. They were never seen again.
Dr. Johnson closed the laboratory several days later. It was a sudden decision. He apologetically explained that the experiments had been a failure and all the men drove home that night jobless.
All the men except Blake and the seven men who had been involved in room three. They stayed. Only Fredrick and Yorik were spared the shot of the mysterious fluid. Fredrick was spared because he had thought of the idea and convinced Dr. Johnson to go along with it and Yorik because he had been Fredrick's most loyal supporter. All the rest opposed the plan.
Dr. Johnson's remaining years were spent creating a network of the zombie-like humans, now called inferiai. Their purpose was to do the work of humans. One of the last things he did was get government approval of this network of inferai under two conditions. The first condition was that Team Griffon would use dangerous criminals as inferiai and the second condition was that the inferiai would work completely underground. Dr. Johnson agreed. Ten days later, he died.
Fredrick then took over Team Griffon. Most of his life was spent created the underground system. About one million criminals were injected and turned into inferiai. They were the ones who toiled underground and built the underground world. The name Team Griffon was changed to Griffothos. Humans started to disappear. And thus, started the reign of terror, the reign of Griffithos.