Read Powerless (Book 1): Powerless for Free Online Page B

anyone to remember who fired the first shot in the war, but both sides knew that the conflict itself was inevitable. The war started as many do; a war of economy.
    The United New World first imposed sanctions upon the countries that aligned themselves with The Old World Alliance. They would trade only with themselves and neutral countries.
    It was strongly favoured that neutral countries only trade with the United New World, to which most did as they saw The Old World Alliance to be too authoritarian and brutal towards its own people. These sanctions allowed the United New World to grow in prosperity and become the predominant world power.
    Smaller members of the Old World Alliance saw prosperity in the polices that were being adopted in neighbouring countries, allowing for better infrastructure, health care, education and economic growth.
    These smaller members did not see why they were handing over their nation’s resources to be dictatorially ruled. Some of these countries reached out to The United New World to ask to help to break the chains of tyranny imposed by the Old World Alliance.
    The United New World had a policy of helping smaller countries to move away from the Old World Alliance’s control and to align them with their own viewpoint. However, these policies would only be fully enacted if the country that wanted to realign itself had large, if not substantial, natural resources that could then be traded to the United New World as a dowry for freeing them.
    As countries began to move away, The Old World Alliance tightened control on smaller member states and engaged in mass propaganda to maintain power. Events escalated and eventually the economic war evolved into all-out war.
    This was a war that neither side could win, nor could afford to lose. War raged for an age; each side cancelled out the other, as the abilities of one side was countered. After fourteen years of fighting and destruction, a truce was drawn up, and from that time to this, the world has known only peace.
    As the next generation of children grew up, it became clear that they all would benefit from the leap in evolution and that all the kids had developed an ability of some sort. This generation also grew up knowing only war and it was this knowledge that led to the signing of the peace treaty.
    The treaty forced The Old World alliance to improve their human rights policies and discontinue any desecration of the human form in the name of advancing the human race. The treaty also enacted policies by which the United New World would trade openly with the Old World Alliance to increase the balance of economic wealth and prosperity. Both sides opened their borders and allowed relatively free movement between the two governments’s controlled areas. The treaty held the balance of power between governments and the power that they shared was finite, to say the very least. This balance of peace would hold true over the next two generations, right up to the current day.”
    Philip stopped there, feeling that maybe all this information thrown at the two young boys might have been lost on them. He let out a sigh, releasing the pressure that had built up as he delivered this information and told them to go outside and play, which they were both happy to do.
    Throughout the conversation Philip thought that to some extent Tom was unable to absorb that quantity of information, as his attention shifted from his father to gazing out of the window. Lee, on the other hand, absorbed it like a sponge, hanging on his every word as if searching for answers to questions he was asking himself about his own shortcomings.
    Later that evening Philip returned to the topic with the boys, gently quizzing them to find out how much they had taken in. It was clear from the outset that Lee had an astonishing appetite for information and ability to recall it, as Lee was able to divulge back to him in great detail everything that he was taught by his father. This, Philip hoped,