Wake Up With the Kimellians - Part Five

The platform was dark when Roger woke up. The lights had to have been turned off by a timer, because he remembered the platform and the corridor being lit when he arrived. The thought of crossing the pipes in the dark filled his stomach with sick unease, but he steeled himself and made the trip crawling as quickly as possible.

The light panel was where he expected it to be, and the corridor looked identical to the last building he’d been in.

However, he had experienced something of a radical change in his appearance during his sleep. The residual lubricant had colored his skin with a splotchy red rash. There was no itching or irritation, but he felt sure that would come later if he couldn’t figure out how to rinse himself off.

Roger opened the first door he passed on his right, and the rows of beeping consoles drew him inside though he felt an urgent need to leave the building and confirm where he was.

Most of the cable-tethered consoles in the room were mounted to the ceiling from long metal tracks. A few were mounted flush with the walls as well.

Roger couldn’t be quite sure with the strange symbol code the screens displayed data in, but he could understand from the menus and graphs that the screens handled different applications for the building’s operation. Some screens displayed maps or graphs, while others contained only rows of buttons, many of which were blinking and beeping.

Each room thereafter was similar, though every screen appeared to be running a different application. Perhaps because so many of the functions flashed with a menacing red shade, Roger wasn’t inclined to press anything. But he could not speed his progress down the corridor yet.

Every console in every room was on. The consoles ran all kinds of applications, and there were many more consoles available than should have been needed to run the building. Many of the screens displayed a globe with different readouts coming from various locations. All of it was written in the gibberish code of the aliens, which left Roger baffled to their purposes.

In the room closest to the elevators on the left side of the corridor, the consoles all ran the same program. Grids of security screens showed the interiors of each apartment from an angle near the back wall, allowing for a view into the kitchen and the bathrooms.

Roger didn’t stay long in the room, because there was no point in peeping. He doubted he’d find anyone he knew by trying, and watching people sit and stare in abject misery only threatened to upset his own fragile emotional state.

As he left the security room, Roger at last admitted to himself why he was taking his time in returning to the elevators. Part of him was afraid the car wouldn’t come down to the sublevels without an access card of some kind, and he was not looking forward to climbing the ladder up, only to find the elevators blocking him from getting out.

But the elevator came to the floor, and Roger took it up to the sublevel with the clothing vendors. Changing clothes and repacking his remaining supplies, he returned to the first floor lobby.

He looked up at the building custodian, an old man with a thin crown of buzzed white hair and thick eyebrows which spouted wild hairs in every direction.

The old man wore an expression of confusion, as though he couldn’t understand why anyone should be in the elevators at all.

Roger stepped into the lobby, and the old man’s eyes grew wider while he raised his hands in front of himself in a protective gesture.

“Is this Houston?” Roger asked.

The custodian blinked at Roger until he repeated himself.

Then the old man lowered his hands slowly before he shook his head. “This used to be Austin, but now it’s 8218. Houston doesn’t exist anymore.” The custodian got to his feet, the shocked look on his face fading to be replaced with concern. “Are you all right? Your face—”

“Can you take me to a room, please?” Roger asked. “I need to shower off this damned lubricant before it kills me.”

The old man nodded and came around the counter. “Don’t you have a card?”

“No, I left it back in my apartment,” Roger said. “It’s a long story, and I’d rather not explain it until after I’ve cleaned up.”

The custodian took Roger to his own quarters at the end of the corridor, and he thankfully didn’t ask any questions before letting Roger clean up.

Roger didn’t look in the mirror until after he’d showered, and then he understood why the old man had reacted in fear. Angry splotches of red covered his cheeks and neck, and with the few patches of unaffected skin being so pale, he almost had a corpselike appearance.

The lower half of his face was covered in a coarse grey beard, while his salt and pepper hair was sprouting quickly, making a jumbled mess on his head. His unkempt hair and rose-tainted skin were made more frightening because his blue eyes sparkled with a hint of madness.

The reflection frightened him. He could see how close to the edge of his sanity he was.

The custodian stood in the front room fidgeting when Roger emerged from the bathroom. “You aren’t from this building. I’ve never seen you before.”

“No, I’ve just arrived,” Roger said. “Down on the lowest level of the buildings, there’s a transport system. I can’t tell you the number of the city I left, but I’m sure it was still in Kansas.”

The custodian’s shoulders dropped as the tension drained from him. “I wondered how you’d come from the bottom floor.”

“You don’t seem surprised about the transports,” Roger said.

“I’ve been transported a few times. Most of us have.” The old man’s face filled with curiosity. “It seems to me that you’re the one who’s surprised.”

“I’ve been in a coma since before the invasion. I woke up the same day the aliens left.” Roger moved to sit on the couch. “I came here because I’d hoped to find whatever was left of Houston. That’s where my family is supposed to be.”

The custodian nodded and sat down beside him “If they survived, they might have been moved here. But then again, they might be working on a farm. There aren’t any transporters on the farms, and the only way to reach them are by bus.”

“That’s not an option,” Roger said.

“No, not with the roads out of the city blocked.”

“Have you been outside?” Roger asked.

“Not to the outskirts of the city, no. I’ve been to the food center this morning, and I’d heard from the center custodian how the city is ringed by a wall of glazed debris.”

“Yes, I think that’s the case with every city,” Roger agreed.

He let the conversation die, partially because he didn’t want to think about the crumpled buses full of bodies which must also surely be outside every city.

But mainly, he couldn’t make small talk with his mind bogged down. He was trying to sort out how long he’d been asleep, and he still had no idea what time it was to begin with. Did he have three days left, or two? Either way, his odds of finding anyone familiar in the city seemed hopelessly slim.

He got up from the couch and went to the window to raise the blinds. The windows of every surrounding building were either empty or blocked by blinds. Even with the custodian in the room with him, Roger felt alone. His eyes raised to the skies, helplessly searching for some kind of sign.

When the answer came half an hour later, Roger’s frown tensed into a tight bow.

The stars flickered. They were not twinkling, nor were they being affected by atmospheric distortion. The familiar pinpoints of light vanished, and with each drop in their light output, other stars flicked briefly in completely different positions, creating random and unfamiliar constellations. The odd phenomena continued for another few seconds, and then the night sky was seemingly back to normal again.

Roger turned his head to see the custodian had joined him at the window. The old man’s brown eyes were filled with confusion, and his toothless mouth hung open, as though he’d meant to ask something and forgotten.

A glimmer of the truth was beginning to dawn on Roger, but he wasn’t ready to acknowledge the idea, or at least not all of it at once.

The purpose of some of the consoles in the sublevels had to be generating an illusory sky, which seemed to suggest the planet itself was somehow being moved. But to what destination, and for what purpose?

He couldn’t find answers with his brain still reeling from having his reality redefined again.

***

Roger rubbed the bridge of his nose, a conflict raging inside him between anger and pride while the principal described the fight. Roy walked in on a younger classmate being bullied in the bathroom, and he pulled the battered boy out of the group first. Then Roy blocked the door and told the three bullies that if they wanted to leave, they had to get through him first.

Two minutes later, a teacher went to investigate a thumping sound and discovered Roy bouncing a bully’s head off the door. Far from teaching the bullies a lesson, Roy had thrashed all three within inches of their lives, and the police were waiting outside to arrest him.

Roy sat in the chair between his parents, his head bowed while he stared at his balled fists. He had a split lip and a bruise under his eye, but otherwise, he was fine. He’d never been in a fight before, and yet, he’d mauled three bullies.

The principal finished talking, and Sandra heaved an angry sigh before looking at her son. “Do you want to explain why this seemed like a good idea?”

Roy glanced at Roger, his brown eyes filled with guilt before he shook his head.

“Why are you looking at him?” Sandra asked. “He didn’t teach you it was okay to beat people up, did he?”

“No, ma’am,” Roy said.

“Then why did you do it?”

“I...that kid gets beat up all the time, Mom. It’s the same bullies doing it every time. It didn’t seem right to me.”

“Son, two wrongs don’t make a right,” Sandra said, her face drawn into a pouting expression of disappointment. “Helping out that boy was a good thing, but what you did after that was just childish. You can’t solve problems by using your fists.” She got to her feet and nodded to the principal. “All right, call in the officers.”

Roy was taken away, and Sandra made more apologies to the principal before they left the office. She said nothing else until they were in the car, and then she groaned angrily.

“He’s turning out just like his father,” she said.

Roger considered biting his tongue. Instead, he asked, “Which one?”

***

The rising sun struck Roger’s closed eyelids, pulling him awake. He was still half asleep when he had a random question come to him. Where do I start searching?

He sat up suddenly when he came up with an answer. He rolled off of the couch and moved to the custodian snoring in his bed.

Shaking the old man’s shoulder, Roger tried not to let himself feel hope.

The custodian rolled over to squint at him blearily. “What is it?”

“Can you run a name search for the tenant of other buildings, or just this one?”

“I can run a search for anyone,” the custodian replied as he sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes. He shuffled to the dresser and opened the top drawer, pulling out a black plastic device. Tapping a button, he waited several seconds before he started tapping commands on the screen. “Name?”

“Sandra Maple,” Roger said.

The old man’s frown answered before he said, “No match.”

“Then try Roy Maple, please.”

The custodian did, then nodded, his wrinkled face relaxing into an expression of relief. “He’s in the city, but he’s in 2194. That’s all the way on the other side of the city.”

Roger nodded, already aware of the returning nervous energy. “Can you make me a map?”

“I can get you an organizer, and you can follow the directions it gives,” the custodian said. “Let’s have some breakfast first, and then I’ll take you downstairs to show you how to use an organizer.”

***

Late in the afternoon, Roger arrived at his destination. He was hot and panting from walking with a brisk pace, and his clothes stuck to his body. But he ignored his discomfort, focusing his thoughts instead on what he might say to his son.

He didn’t count on knocking on the door of an empty apartment, and after waiting a few minutes, he started to pace. A debate brewed in his thoughts over leaving and trying again later, but he was too tired to walk anywhere else.

He sat down in front of the door, muttering about the damned fatigue while he set the organizer in his lap.

After several minutes passed, he picked the organizer up and tried to sort out some of its other functions. But the commands were in the alien language, and the custodian had only shown him how to access the map. He’d needed the old man to enter the address, and while he could understand the symbols for base numbers, the rest of the text on the screen was a mystery.

Once he dropped the organizer back into his lap, he was struck by two thoughts. First he realized he’d never asked the building custodian for his name. He’d no sooner had the thought when another came, and it tore a hole in his chest.

Sandra’s dead.

The hole grew, and out of it flooded a hundred regrets for everything he wanted to say to his wife, for all the things he still wanted to do with her. But she was gone, and  with her absence, another anchor was missing from his life.

His vision obscured behind a wall of tears, and he bowed his head to weep into his hands. He sat crying for almost an hour before drowsiness pulled his eyelids down, and he fell into a light, dreamless sleep. Then he woke at the sound of the elevator doors opening and raised his head.

The boy in the elevator was tall and thickly built, and the roundness Roger remembered in the boy’s face was gone. Standing astride with his hands clenched into fists around two plastic bags, Roy almost looked like the spitting image of his biological father. Even the look of confusion on his dark face seemed familiar to Roger.

For a moment, Roy didn’t recognize him. Roger got to his feet and watched his son shuffle down the corridor while Roy tried to figure out who the thin bruised stranger sitting on his doorstep was.

His look of confusion became disbelief, and then he dropped the plastic sacks. He ran at Roger, his eyes filling with tears while he flung open his arms. “Dad!”

The tall teen nearly knocked Roger over before squeezing him in a tight embrace. Roy cried against his shoulder, and Roger patted his back, closing his eyes when his tears began to blind him again. He would have thought his tear ducts were dried out, and yet, the stream of relieved tears coursing down his cheeks were just as heavy as the tears of grief he’d shed before.

When Roy got himself under control, he remembered the sacks. Instead of taking them to his apartment, he went down the hallway to another apartment, where a shriveled old woman answered the door. Roy passed her the sacks, then bowed down to accept a hug from the woman.

He gave an embarrassed  smile to Roger as he returned to his apartment to unlock the door with a card. “That’s Emma. I’ve been helping her out,” he explained as he opened the door and waved his father inside. “How did you get here?”

Roger followed his son to the kitchen, accepting a can of water while he started to describe everything he’d seen and done since waking up in the hospital. They drifted to the living room while he talked, and when Roger explained how he’d learned of Sandra’s death, Roy’s face fell.

His eyes glazed over while he stared at his can of water. “She wouldn’t leave you,” he said, raising his head to watch his father with a sad expression. “We waited in the hospital until one of the aliens pushed open the door.” Roy swallowed and looked down again. “It told us we had to leave, and Mom...Mom said, ‘I’m not leaving my husband.’”

Roger set his hand on the back of Roy’s neck, pulling Roy closer while he started to cry again. Roger didn’t need to hear more to know Roy had seen his mother killed by the alien.

But after he’d calmed down, Roy said, “They...the aliens look like blobs until they dissolve someone. Then their organs turned orange, and you could see how they moved. Without eating, they looked like they oozed around, but they really rolled around their organs like a sticky wheel. Whenever they attacked someone, they...they threw their outer body to capture their victims, and then they pulled their organs around the victims to digest them. That’s what I saw the alien do to Mom, and...I knew I couldn’t fight that.”

“No, of course not,” Roger said, raising his hand to pat the back of Roy’s head. “Even if you did fight, there was no way you could hope to win, or even to survive.”

“That’s what I told myself.” Roy shook his head. “It didn’t make the guilt go away.” Roy sniffled and sat up, balling his fist to dry his eyes.

He looked over at the window, frowning while he considered an idea. “You said you saw the sky flicker last night. Do you know which of the consoles in the lower level might control the sky?”

“No, I don’t know what any of the consoles did. I can’t read the alien’s language.”

Roy nodded. “Are you willing to take another trip down with me?”

Roger spent only a second thinking before he agreed.

***

As before, Roger took the car down to the last available sublevel and returned the elevator to the ground floor. But the second trip down was easier with Roy assisting to open the elevator doors.

However, the trip down the ladder was exhausting, and spots were floating in front of Roger’s vision once he stepped out into the corridor. He rested his hand against the wall and panted quietly.

Roy’s hand settled on his shoulder, and he turned to see the boy’s expression filled with deep concern. Roger patted Roy’s hand, then pointed to the first door on the right. “Let’s get started, and you can tell me what each of these things do.”

Roy led the way into the room, but he said nothing while he went from one console to the next. His brow furrowed deeply, and many times, he reached out to tap command buttons on the screen, which brought up pages of text.

But if he understood what the machines did, he said nothing while he went to the next room.

He’d been past four more consoles when Roger’s curiosity overcame him. “Well, what are they?”

“They’re servers.” Roy reached out to tap a button while he talked. “Each building has servers dedicated to handling a localized set of tasks, but all of the buildings are connected. If you shut off one system, you shut off the whole network. So for the weather systems, that might not be a good...”

Roy’s face became disturbed as he pointed to the console. “This is a defensive system. It’s hooked up to the satellite systems, but all of the satellites are looking out, not down.”

Recognition lit Roger’s face, and he tapped his son’s arm. “You said the buildings are all linked, right? If you shut down one server, the whole network goes down.”

“Well, the application is shut down in all buildings, yes.” Roy shook his head. “But if what you said about the planet moving is true, maybe we shouldn’t shut off—”

“No, we don’t want to shut off everything.” Roger pointed at the console. “But anything having to do with automated defenses needs to be turned off.”

“I don’t understand,” Roy confessed. “Wouldn’t we want the defenses on to help against the Kimellians?”

Roger shook his head. “No, that’s what the aliens would want us to think, that they were doing us a favor. They aren’t. This whole place is a booby trap waiting for the Kimellians to show up. And guess who’s been set up to look like the guilty parties?”

“The aliens were trying to frame us?”

“That’s my theory.” Roger frowned at his son’s unreadable expression. “You aren’t buying it?”

“No, I am.” Roy looked back at the console and leaned over to tap out a command. The console shut off. “That’s one system down, and no telling how many to go. Before we hunt down the other consoles, are you sure about this?”

“Yes, absolutely. Whoever the Kimellians are, they’re probably a rival to the aliens who took over our planet. If we leave these systems on, the Kimellians will come down here with guns blazing in retaliation for the attack.”

Roy nodded, chewing his lower lip while his face filled with a thoughtful expression. “Okay, you could have a point, but what if the Kimellians just take us prisoner instead?”

Roger stared at his son, unsure of what to say.  Finally he shook his head. “We have to take that risk. Maybe once the Kimellians understand we turned off the defensive systems, they’ll grant us mercy. But if they’re attacked, you can be sure they’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

Roy nodded, and went to work. In each room, he shut down weapons systems and surveillance equipment.

When he finished, they returned to the apartment to have dinner, and then they went out for a walk.

Nothing was said between them. Neither wanted to reminisce about the good old days, and the future was a topic that couldn’t be broached under the circumstances.

Yet despite his heavy feelings of fatigue, Roger could not sleep that night. What right did he have to decide the fate of the entire human race? If the Kimellians were just as cruel as the alien slaveholders, the decision to turn everyone over was made by him, and the guilt would stay with him forever.

He shook himself from the bleak thought. Each person left on the planet had chosen to live and become a slave rather than die. They would want to live, and for better or worse, he was making the decision to try and spare the remains of his people from being slaughtered.

My people, he thought and smiled bitterly.

Though he was a people person, Roger had never felt much of a connection with the rest of the human race. Only in the face of a disaster which threatened everyone did he realize how important every single life was.

A low rumbling hum drew him out of his thoughts. Across the room, Roy rolled over in his bed, raising his head to exchange a worried look with Roger before they both got up to look outside the window.

The ships descending from the dim morning sky looked like flying saucers from an old black and white movie. The saucers didn’t spin in the same way, but they all had the same featureless silver exteriors.

As the ships reached the tops of the buildings, the unblemished surfaces became pocked with holes. From the larger four pits, a set of landing pylons descended, while blinking blue light domes jutted from the smaller gaps.

From their vantage point on the tenth floor, Roger and Roy watched the saucers land, though they could not see any doors or bays opening in the sides.

An hour after the ships landed, a group of figures in blue suits got out of the ships and started to slowly explore around the buildings.

Roger turned to head for the door, and Roy grabbed his wrist. “Dad, what are you doing?”

“Being a guinea pig.” Roger went to the door. “You can wait up here if you want. But somebody ought to go down and make friendly with the new neighbors before they get the wrong idea and think we’re all mute and stupid.”

Roy came with him, and for as brave as Roger tried to sound, his palms became slick on the ride to the ground floor. He tried drying them on his uniform, then looked down at the wet stains and thought, Oh, sure, that’ll make a good first impression.

He tried not to smile, but the return of his gallows’ humor seemed fitting. He had no idea if the Kimellians were friendly or not, and he could very well be making his last ride down to the lobby. If it was going to be his time to die, he wanted to end his life saying something witty, instead of the usual, “Oh, God, no! Please don’t kill me!”

The elevator doors slid open, and Roger’s smile vanished, his face shifting into a look of astonishment when he saw the first Kimellians standing in the lobby.

The wide corridor was full of the blue suited figures, all of whom wore helmets with black visors that obscured their faces. The suits and the helmets were shiny, almost metallic looking if not for the way the outer shells wrinkled and deformed when the Kimellians moved. They ranged greatly in height, but most were freakishly thin with long limbs and knobby joints.

Roger stepped out of the elevator. Every black visor turned toward him, but no one raised the silver rifles they carried. All around him, the air was filled with the slow hiss of breathing equipment. No one moved to attack, and it seemed the Kimellians were waiting for him to say something.

Roger raised his hands as his smile returned. “Take me to your leader.”

***

Roger sat alone in a cell, seated at a table. They were the only furnishings in the room aside from another chair across the table from his. That the chairs had a long seat and a high leg length to accommodate taller Kimellians did not change the obvious function of the room.

He was to be interrogated.

He corrected himself. The one word any of the aliens could say that he understood was quarantine, and he allowed himself to be taken into a ship without a fight.

But quarantine did not mean the Kimellians were friendly. There was both the possibility that the humans had been infected by the aliens as yet another trap, and that human illnesses could be compatible with the Kimellians.

But until they had determined whether the humans were safe, the Kimellians would not explain what their plans were.

In the two days since they were picked up, Roger had been moved to a private quarters away from Roy, and he found sleeping was possible only by waiting for fatigue to pull him under. What little rest he could get was filled with odd dreams of living in an alien building with Sandra. Nicole and Zelda were his neighbors, and Harry kept coming around, asking permission to see his son.

But every time he woke up knowing he was dreaming, because Sandra turned Harry away by saying, “He’s not your son.”

Roger forced the fragmented memories of his dreams away while he sat forward in the seat, his legs swinging above the floor by several inches. The table came to his upper chest, and so he laid his arms out on the table and rested his chin on his hands, thinking how he must have looked like a little kid waiting through detention.

The door opened, and two entirely different creatures walked into the room. The first had blue “skin,” a hard exoskeleton. His bulbous head was dotted near the center by two lines of iridescent red eyes, giving him ten in total around a vertically arranged collection of mandibles.

The second alien was shorter, and his skin was mottled grey. He had black eyes, and a strange, almost flat nose above a tiny doll-like mouth.

Both aliens wore the same style of blue uniform, a dark shade which made them look like cops. The metal decorations on the fronts and sleeves of the uniforms reminded Roger of police officers from Earth.

The grey alien sat down in the seat across from Roger, while the first shut the door and leaned against the wall.

Bad cop, Roger thought.

Then the grey alien stunned him by speaking English in a light, breathy voice. “We’ve almost concluded our investigation, but based on what we learned, we understand you have spared your race a gruesome fate.”

Roger slumped his chest against the table as the tension melted from his spine. “I knew those weapons were meant to provoke you into attacking. The aliens told us you were coming, and you would kill us all.”

He paused, and the alien nodded for him to continue. “I think they did it to keep us hiding instead of looking around at what the consoles were reporting. I don’t know which of you is a real Kimellian, but I’d just like to say, I’m glad you’re not like the other aliens.”

The grey head of the alien leaned over as it blinked once. “The species in question were Globolds. However, you are mistaken about the term Kimellians. It is not a race, but a title bestowed upon us.” The alien gestured to its partner. “We are both Kimellians, but the word would perhaps be more meaningful if it were translated into your dialect as—”

“Police,” Roger guessed.

“Yes, exactly so,” the grey alien said. “My name is Vorn.” He then introduced his partner with a collection of clicks and whistles, and the blue alien bowed its head in a polite gesture.

Roger smiled. “Please, don’t be offended if I can’t repeat that.”

The alien said something, and Roger looked to Vorn for an explanation. “He says it is all right. Even his parents have trouble spelling it.”

Roger nodded, his smile fading once his mind began coming up with important questions again.

The aliens did not seem to be interrogating him, and so he chose to press his luck. “The Globolds were moving our planet, weren’t they?”

“Yes. Based on the settings of the consoles, we can guess you were meant to be sold to the Nometrians. The Globolds are getting desperate if they came so far out of their way to collect your world.”

“Can you put our planet back?”

“No,” Vorn said and clasped his knobby hands, resting them on the table. “I’m sorry, but the Globolds destroyed your solar system in an effort to cover their tracks.”

Roger closed his eyes, swallowing to fight against nausea. “What’s to become of us?”

“We will need to locate a star similar to yours, one closer to our jurisdiction to prevent the Globolds from returning to claim your planet again. The search may take some time, and in the meantime, you will need to stay on our ships. We are making arrangements for a ship which can carry all of you, as well as your animals.”

“An ark,” Roger mused.

“I’m not familiar with the term,” Vorn said.

“It’s a big ship,” Roger said and waved his hand. “I’m sorry, please go on.”

“I’m afraid that’s all I can explain for now. We will escort you to your quarters soon, but there is one other matter we must clear up. The male you arrived with is demanding to live with you, and he is claiming you are his parent. However, our genetic testing reveals this is inaccurate.”

“Your genetic tests don’t take adoptions into account.” Roger smiled and nodded. “It’s all right Vorn, he’s my son.”

Vorn nodded and rose from his seat. “Then we will move you both to larger quarters today, and I apologize for our confusion. If we have any further questions, we will be in touch.”

“Wait,” Roger said. “These other aliens, the Nometrians—what do they look like?”

“They are very similar in appearance to you,” Vorn said. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” Roger said.

It was a small lie, but he didn’t feel like explaining himself.

Vorn’s answer confirmed that the buildings on Earth weren’t made to allow humans access to every level. Instead, the whole planet was custom designed as a factory for another race. The humans were just a bonus item, a complete staff for the factories who were already trained in their assignments. Every convenience he’d assumed was meant for the humans instead was developed for their new masters.

Vorn opened the door, pausing while his partner stepped out first. “You will need to wait until an escort can take you to your quarters, but please do not worry. We will try to return you to your planet and let you get back to your own lives as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” Roger said.

The Kimellians left, and Roger stared at the door. Reality was being redefined again. It had changed every day since he’d woken up from the coma, and probably would be redefined every day for a very long time.

But there would be no mass slaughter, and no final extinction of the human race. Not yet, anyway. There was still hope that ultimately, life could return to a semblance of normalcy.

Roger smiled as he thought, I saved the world, and all I had to do was wake up at just the right moment.

The End