Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
Cir grabs me, but I’m not here to be grabbed.
“You just started a war like you can’t fucking imagine,” I say, scrambling away under their table, which now see contains a map of Earth on top of it. There are thick red dots and lines scribed across it. I don’t know what they mean, but I’m going to say nothing good.
This is not the most dignified moment of my life. I came to the Halo to get a good job and maybe a life for myself, and what I’ve ended up in the middle of is a presumably broken engagement and an attack on humanity itself.
“If you are trying to intimidate us, it’s not working,” one of the others says. Still no introductions happening here. This is just a scrum of big aliens trying to get me, a single human, under control.
Finally, Cir grabs me by the leg and hauls me out from under the table. He pulls me close to his body and hugs me close.
Cir
Poor little thing. She’s so distraught. We haven’t been able to understand even half of what she’s been saying. It’s all been pouring out in a tumble of human emotion.
I knew that the emotional wave we deployed was not going to go easy on the population, but it was the most gentle response to the entire situation. Nobody was physically harmed, though admittedly, it may have come as a shock to those who were not aware of the nuke situation. Punishments are always imperfect.
“You’re the bad guys,” she sobs again. “You’re the worst. The worst, meanest guys. And we’re going to fight you. You understand? We’re going to fight you.”
We’re aware that the humans are agitated. We have poked the nest and the little bees are ready to attack. But we can smoke them down as easily as we can rile them up.
Unbeknownst to Jessica, we did not simply deploy the ray as an effort to hurt people. We did it as a form of distraction, and it was effective.
While they were crying and screaming, we disabled every rocket on the planet. They no longer have the aerial capacity to attack us. This is now a world on lockdown, shut down for their own good. If we have to re-raise humanity as the spoiled children of the stars they are, then that is what we will do.
“I take it this is your human assistant who defected and then returned to apparently yell at us incoherently,” Captain Talos says.
“She got hit by the ray,” I remind him. “She’s not normally like this.”
“I hate you! I’m going to kick your head off!”
This is a microcosm of humanity as a whole here in my arms. We are seeing very clearly what we are dealing with, intense emotionality and an absolute refusal to submit even when submission would be the easier, safer, happier solution to all their problems.
“This is a very difficult little species,” Captain Talos muses. “You reward them and provide them with their needs, and they demand more. You punish them and they lash out in anger. It’s almost as if they cannot be made happy in the normal way.”
I think about his observation for a moment, putting it together with my studies. “Humans are a striving species. They live for a fight. They did not come to inhabit so much of their planet by simply settling for having enough. There is a hunger in each of their souls that will never be sated. And there is a warrior inside each of them who calls for blood in times of peace and war alike.”
“Very poetic. But what are we going to do with them?”
I don’t know what we’re going to do with humanity as a whole, but I do know what I’m going to do with Jessica. I lift her up a little to resettle her in my arms.
“I’m going to give this one a bath.”
“I hate you,” she mumbles as I submerge her gently in the water I summon in the vessel she prefers most. I do feel some pity for her, though she assuredly brought all this pain on herself.
“I warned you,” I say gently.
She opens her eyes and gives me a betrayed look. “How could you? You said you came to save us.”
“We didn’t hurt you.”
“Humans are made of feelings. You hurt us worse than you think, you big dumb fucker…” She is starting to doze off in the bath. I leave my arm under her head and hold her there, watching over her so no harm comes to her even as she continues to mumble curses at me under her breath.
7 THE LIES JUST KEEP COMING
Jessica
I wake up with my feelings aching. It’s like waking up with my body aching, but only on the inside. I immediately recognize the feeling as being related to the strike on the world yesterday.