Zoe's Tale | John Scalzi

How do you tell your part in the biggest tale in history?I ask because it's what I have to do.
I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world.
Holy icon to a race of aliens.
A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall.
Witness to history.
Friend.
Daughter.
Human.
Seventeen years old.Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of.
But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did -- how I did what I had to do -- not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too.
All of you.
I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try to make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope.
Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity.
All through my eyes.It's a story you know.
But you don't know it all.