were capable of witheringly sarcastic stares, but she laid one on me then. "Really?"
"No, we won't." Every bad stereotype about politicians flooded my mind, and I knew that simple human empathy could only hold out so long against godhood. Hell, would I refuse godhood to save nine other people? Even if I knew all nine of them, even if I loved all nine, I'd be a freaking god!
And that really scared me.
"How will you do it?" I wanted to know what my probable fate was going to be, even if there was nothing I could do about it.
"Our method is very, if you will pardon the expression, humane. The extraneous are given a set amount of time to say their farewells, backed up, and then are peacefully and painlessly deconstructed into their component molecules."
"How much time?"
"It varies from species to species. We are considering two lunar cycles as a proper amount for humans."
Two months to say all of your goodbyes. While almost everyone you knew and everyone you didn't know was saying theirs. "Will you provide transportation for people who need to travel to say their farewells?"
"Of course. Any of the extraneous who need assistance will be granted it. We are not without empathy."
"Ninety-five percent of the population might beg to differ."
"As I stated, my view is in the minority. I wish for you to have your home and live your own lives." She sat down on the floor, giving up the pretense of cleaning that she had been keeping up for me. "It is perhaps that our leadership loves humans too much; they wish to embrace you and absorb you whole. The humans that will be left behind will enjoy lives such as your species has only dreamed of. This planet will be a paradise, and the rest of your solar system shall be your playground. Humanity will be assured of survival; indeed, it will be assured to flourish."
"Did the Fhh-bop-uh have to go through this?" It might have been unfair to ask, but I wanted to know if she had any inkling of what this was going to be like for us.
"Oh, yes. I was the only survivor in my region. This is why we were chosen for this mission. It was thought that we would have the greatest empathy for you."
I was a little flummoxed. I hadn't really expected her to say yes; in spite of my interactions with Bilbette, the Fhh-bop-uh seemed too alien to have needed restraining. "How much of your population was… extraneous?"
"Over ninety-nine percent, but to put that in perspective, our population was much larger than yours."
That light-headedness was overwhelming me. "How… how do you work for them? They wiped out your entire species."
"Not entire. Obviously, there are still many of us left."
"Not as many."
"No." She slithered over to her bench and sat down. "I will be honest with you, Cal. I harbored feelings of ill-will towards the C.O.I.L. myself. I also felt a great deal of what your psychologists term survivor's guilt. But everything that I have experienced since then, everything that the rest of my people have lived… I have to think that it was worth it. My people were sacrificed for this, and our existence has been dedicated to proving that we were worthy of it." She directed her sensory stalk back at me. "I believe that we were. Can you believe the same?"
I shook my head. "I don't know."
She rose from the bench and headed to the door. "Start believing. You will not be on the extraneous list. See you next week."
And after dropping that nuke on my head, she left.
I didn't sleep the rest of the night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw everyone I knew and loved turning to dust in front of me, while I, god though I was, was powerless to stop it.
I didn't share this information with anyone else. I didn't know how to say that I was about to be ascended in the alien rapture while most of them were going to be turned into fertilizer for the paradise to come. I tried to keep up my spirits but it was hard to get up most of the mornings that week. A lot of people were feeling the same way, including the criminal element. I wasn't getting any work that week, giving me plenty of time to do my illegal hacking.
True to Bilbette's prediction, the leaders were folding, as long as they were the ones who got to be gods. The C.O.I.L. was agreeable to letting some of them stay, but apparently a lot of them were not C.O.I.L. material. This was the real snag in the negotiations; they had reached a point where they were OK with billions of people dying. They just wanted to make sure they weren't in that number.
Game day rolled around and I was undecided as to whether to say anything to the other humans in the group or not. I decided to keep quiet, and so did Bilbette. I just went with it, and we had a fun night. For a few hours, I was able to forget about the world outside and live in the fantasy.
Bilbette left early that night, but Rod stayed behind to help me clean up. He was obviously curious about what Bilbette and I had talked about the week before, and asked, "So? Did she give away any of the secrets of the universe?"
"Maybe one or two." I thought I could hold it in, that I didn't want to say anything, but it all came spilling out of me, because the guilt and excitement and embarrassment were all just churning around in me and couldn't be contained anymore. "We've got to drop ninety-five percent of our population if we want to join the C.O.I.L. The only thing that's stopping them from vaporizing all of the 'extraneous' people now is that our frickin' leaders all want a guaranteed spot in the five percent and the Fhh-bop-uh won't give it to them." God, it felt good to say that.
Rod, on the other hand, didn't seem to be feeling too good about it. "Ninety-five?"
I handed him a beer from the fridge. "Bilbette said that the Fhh-bop-uh were forced to kill off over ninety-nine percent of their people, but their population was larger than ours."
He sipped at his beer and stared into space. "Then, why are they here?"
"They've got sympathy for us. They've been there, done that." I shrugged. "Want to make their sacrifice worthwhile."
"Are they… are they just gonna round us up?" He chugged the rest of his beer down to dull the thoughts that were now zipping through his brain, just as they had been through mine for the last week.
"I'm not sure how it goes. She said that it's painless."
He set the empty bottle on my counter and I handed him another. "How long do you think we have?"
"She wasn't sure, but – and you can't tell anybody about this, cuz I'm not spending the end of the world in jail – I've been looking through some classified documents, and I don't think the human leadership is gonna hold out much longer." I got myself a beer and took a good swallow. "The White House is drafting their statement for the public right now. They've got it tentatively scheduled for the end of next month."
Rod's hand holding the beer was shaking, so I took it from him and set it down on the counter. "A month and half to live. You better wind up this campaign." He gave me a weak smile.
"Well, we've got a little bit longer than that." I walked him over to the couch and sat him down; poor guy was shaking so hard I thought he was going to fall over. "Bilbette said that all the people who aren't gonna become gods get marked first, so I'm sure that takes a while. Then, they get time to say their goodbyes. She said that's probably going to be about two months. Then, uh…"
"Then that's it."
"That's it." I sat down and took a good long pull. "The ones who are left get to explore the universe, and everybody else is fertilizer. Earth becomes a paradise."
"Wow." He curled up on the couch, pulling one of my pillows to him like a teddy bear. I half-expected him to stick his thumb in his mouth, but he retained some dignity. "I always thought I'd have time to have a family, you know, man? I mean, I'd find a lady, and we'd have kids and we'd grow old and have grandkids and then we'd die, but the kids would go on. My family would go on, so I'd go on." He closed his eyes. "I'm not going on, now."
I put my hand on his feet and patted. "Doesn't mean you can't find a lady in the meantime. Bound to be people looking for somebody to spend the next few months with. Hell,
you might be able to find more than one lady."
He snorted a little. "How hard is it gonna be to find girls whose bucket list has 'orgy with nerds' on it?"
"You've got four months to see."
"I don't like my odds."
"Never know if you don't try."
"I suppose not." He closed his eyes. "Mind if I sleep here tonight? I don't feel like driving home."
"No prob, man." I went and got him a blanket and a pillow. "You don't work in the morning, do you?"
"No, I'm off."
I lay the blanket over him and put the pillow under his head. "Do you need a bed time story?"
"Not from you," he said, indignantly. "Now, you find me one of those orgy with nerds girls…"
I hit him with another pillow and left his beer where he could get the rest of it, then showered and got myself ready for bed. I didn't work the next day, either, but I was suddenly very tired. Confession is exhausting.
The next morning, I swore Rod to secrecy, but who would he tell? He worked at a convenience store, and none of his old Army buddies owned a TV station or newspaper or blog or anything. He could tell the rest of the gaming group, which would make game night a little weird for Bilbette, but have little impact on the rest of the world. Rod was the perfect person for me to spill the beans to, because he was just as powerless to change things as I was. We had each other for misery-loving company.
I composed an ad for a singles dating site – 'Looking for company at the