“Re-fucking-purposed? What the fuck do you mean ‘repurposed’? You took everything that I had that was precious to me and destroyed it, turned them into monsters. Monsters! Jesus Christ, I killed a little boy because of you fuckers. I murdered a boy.” She was on her feet now, closing the gap between Jacob, spittle flying from her mouth as the words, emotional gunshots each of them, exploded from within her.
Something warm and wet trickled through her fingers. Looking down at her clenched fists she saw a rivulet of blood leaking from between her fingers, nails dug deep into the heel of her palm.
“We are… aware of your emotional pain, Emily, but the end was near for our, your, species. Within a span of several hundred years, you would have been reduced to a statistically insignificant number. Your survival viability was… negligible.”
“Then why not just leave us to wipe ourselves out?” she yelled into Jacob’s face, all fear of him gone now. God damn them all to hell. “Why the fuck would you want to come in and destroy us now? Why not just let us do it to ourselves?”
Jacob returned her gaze unflinchingly, either unaware or uncaring of the rage that was directed at him.
He continued, his voice still soft, still low, as if he was talking to a child, “Because your species would not have been the only one to have become extinct. More than ninety-eight percent of this planet’s species would also have been lost along with you. Given the high probability that the remaining two percent would also become extinct within a thousand years, we decided to act while there was still sufficient biological material available to ensure success.”
“So what?” she yelled, her voice cracking from the strain. “So fucking what if we destroyed this world? It was our world to destroy, you fucks.”
“This was never your world, Emily Baxter,” Jacob interrupted, the first real hint of emotion entering his voice as he leaned in closer to her. “That was a delusion your species created to ensure its continued pillaging and self-destructive actions. If you could see what I see, Emily, if you had the knowledge that we have, you would understand. You would know that life in this universe is so very, very rare, so fragile. When we find a world like this one, we observe it in the hope that its occupants might correct their course. Inevitably, they do not. That is when we initiate our program. While there are still enough biological resources available to reverse the downward spiral.”
Emily slumped to the floor, her legs folding beneath her.
“‘Biological resources.’ You mean people, right? People and animals and plants. My friends and my family.” She flicked a dismissive hand toward Jacob. “Jesus, even you and the shit you put me through. They even used you.”
“Your animosity toward me, toward who I was, is understandable, Emily. Both you and I are so very similar, we are both perfect examples of how badly life wants to try to exist. My memories tell me that I had to deceive you to ensure my continued survival, just as you have done so very much to ensure not only your own survival but also that of Rhiannon and your other companions.”
“I am nothing like you,” she screamed, pushing herself to her feet. “Nothing! You, whatever you are, are pure fucking evil.”
This time Jacob smiled when he spoke.
“Your concept of good and evil is an outdated one, Emily, the product of a young, deluded species. The race that created us evolved past such emotions while your solar system was nothing more than a swirling mass of dust and noble gases. They had explored this universe and others like it and found nothing but darkness. The only light, an occasional gemstone of a living world. Being creatures of pure reason, they assumed the task of preserving that life where they could, and ending it for the greater good where they must. We are the tools they created to accomplish that task.”
Emily slumped back to the floor. Its surface was warm, with an almost living texture and heat. It was repulsive and she shuddered, drawing her hands into her naked lap.
Jacob continued, “The life on this planet was used to feed and nourish the new life we have created: better, more efficient life that will ensure the continued viability of this planet.”
“If your makers are so fucking omnipotent then how did I survive? Why did I survive?” Emily asked, her energy lagging now from the emotional outpouring.
Jacob crouched down until his eyes were at the same level as Emily’s before he spoke. “There are always survivors from the original inhabitants. Always some who, through a natural immunity that we could never account for or cosmic luck, possess a resistance to the effects of the red rain, as you called it. It is always a statistically insignificant number. You, and the others like you, are an anomaly that, by virtue of being so unlikely, become a probability. That is why we send the Harvesters, to ensure the complete integration of any surviving life forms. But there are always those that manage to elude them.”
Emily stared at the floor. “Harvesters? You mean the thing that killed Simon and Ben? That tried to kill Rhiannon and me? The thing I fucking crushed? Did you mean that Harvester?”
Emily laughed but there was no humor in it.
“So come on, use me for your great and wonderful fucking plan. Why waste more perfectly good ‘biological material’? Just get it over with, for fuck’s sake. I am so damn tired of listening to you talk.”
“That is no longer necessary.”
Emily slowly raised her head to Jacob’s eye level. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, right? You’re rejecting me?” This time a laugh that she could only describe as diabolical bubbled up from her throat.
Jacob did not seem to find it quite as ironic. His lips parted in a slight smile, the first hint of real human emotion she had seen from this Xerox copy of the original man. “There is no use for you now, Emily; the process of recreation is complete. It would be uneconomical to integrate you or your companions. But we do have another use for you.”
“Let me guess? You’re going to carry out more of your warped experiments on me? Turn me into one of your living machines? Is that it?”
“No, Emily,” Jacob said, seeming honestly offended by her remark. “We need you to take a message back to your people and the others that will join you.”
Jacob gestured with a hand and a map appeared in the air between him and Emily. It was so realistic she felt that if she wanted to she could reach out and touch the mountains and the coastline, run her fingers through the slowly moving waves of the ocean that washed over its surface.
It was a map of what had once been the southwest United States, red now, except for the occasional snowcapped mountain.
Then Jacob began to explain what it was he wanted from her, and with each word he spoke, Emily felt the anger begin to leave her.
“Do you have any questions, Emily?” Jacob asked when he was done explaining the message he wanted her to carry back with her to the other survivors at Point Loma.
“Why?” she asked finally. “Why would you do this?”
Jacob’s lids closed. Beneath them, Emily could see his eyes moving back and forth as though he was deeply asleep. A slight smile crossed his face and his eyes snapped open again.
“Because, despite what you think of us, what you believe us to be, we are not monsters, Emily.”
An opening appeared noiselessly in the curve of the wall to her left. Jacob stepped toward it, still flanked by the two aliens. “This way, Emily,” he said, gesturing toward the doorway.