THREE of THIRTY-TWO
"Nine million!" I exclaimed, shocked. It was a bit of a leap from just two hundred inhabitants, wasn't it?
"Nine million, six-hundred-thousand." Katie remarked, not particularly helping the situation. I wouldn't have expected her to be so… blunt, at a time like this.
"Thanks, Katie." I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes as I did so. "Look, this is just not possible, and you know it's not. A tiny village on the outskirts of the solar system can't become… that in a matter of twenty-three years." I gestured to the city below again, which took up a good quarter of the planet.
"So what are you suggesting?" Katie asked, shrugging her shoulders. "That something happened while we were gone, causing the population to explode?"
"Precisely." I nodded. "This kind of population boom couldn't have happened without some external stimulus. And I intend to find out what that stimulus was. Andi?"
"Yes, Matthew?" Andi replied, her slightly-robotic voice echoing against the walls of the corridor as she spoke.
"Can you tell me the exact date that Manchester became a city?" I asked, determined to get to the bottom of things.
"Certainly, sir." She replied obediently. "The village of Manchester officially became a township on or about the second of October, twenty-three twenty-three, when its population surpassed one-hundred-thousand inhabitants. In twenty-three twenty-five, following mass immigration from the planet Earth, the population soared to over five million people, giving the township de facto city status. The population continued to increase at a drastic rate until the end of the decade, when it leveled out at approximately nine-and-a-quarter million. It has continued to slowly climb since then." This was even more drastic than I could have imagined. Was Andi really trying to tell me that in the space of two years, the population had increased by nearly five million people? And why had so many of them come from Earth? I simply had to know more.
"Why was there mass immigration from Earth, Andi?" I asked. "You said that in twenty-three twenty-five, there was mass immigration from Earth."
"That is correct, sir." She assured me with confidence. "Well, almost correct. Throughout the summer and autumn of the year twenty-three twenty-four, net immigration from Earth was recorded at around forty-three billion, wi-"
"Hold on a minute." I interrupted, not quite sure if I had heard Andi correctly. "Forty-three billion? As in, nine zeroes, a billion?"
"Yes, sir." She confirmed. "Approximately ninety-seven point two percent of the planet's population at that time." I shook my head with a mocking grin.
"No, no, no…" I began, folding my arms across my chest as I spoke. "You've misread the figures. You must have misread the figures."
"With all due respect, sir…" Andi replied, sounding slightly impatient. "I am a highly advanced artificial intelligence unit with an IQ of over ten thousand. I do not 'misread the figures'. The data has been correctly collated from over three hundred independent population quotas." My face fell as I realised that she was right. No AI could make such a monumental mistake. Which could only mean one thing: that in the summer and autumn of twenty-three twenty-four, almost everyone on the planet just… left. But why? What had happened to the Earth? To my home planet? I was almost too afraid to ask, terrified of what I might hear. But I don't think I could have lived with myself if I hadn't found out that day.
"Andi?" I asked, my voice almost a whisper. "What… What happened? Why did everybody leave Earth?" I suspected that I already knew the answer…
"I believe I have enough data in my records to explain, sir." She replied solemnly. "But you may want to take a seat before I begin."
"On the seventh of July, twenty-three twenty, a seeding ship landed in Dock 17 of the Queen Elizabeth Ship Port, London, England, Earth. The ship had been cleared by both air traffic control and dock staff to make it's landing, despite the fact that neither the crew nor the ship's onboard artificial intelligence system had replied to any of their transmissions. For precautionary reasons, a squad of fully armed security operatives accompanied dock staff as one of the ship's airlocks was opened for inspection. The entire team, seven in all, were killed within seconds of opening the airlock, as two large, heavily-armoured alien creatures burst through the open door. More operatives were scrambled, but by the time they had arrived at the scene, the creatures were long gone. They had fled into the streets of London. The operatives inspected the ship to better understand what had happened to its crew. Four of them were nowhere to be found, and the two that were on board were found dead in their hypersleep booths, both of them with severe injuries to the stomach. In the engine bay, two large, egg-like objects were found, both of which appeared to be open. It was originally thought that the creatures came from the eggs, killed what was left of the ship's crew, and then waited for the ship to reach Earth, possibly for as long as sixteen months.
In the city, panic quickly arose, as the creatures took to the streets, preying on innocent civilians. By the end of the week, over forty people were reported missing or dead. Sightings of the creatures were soon recorded outside of the city centre, as far away as Uxbridge. It was believed that the creatures had reproduced with one another, and that there could now be as many as ten of them at large. By this point, the British government had called on specialists from Kovacs Extrasolar Solutions, the Jupiter Mining Corporation, and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, all of whom had high-budget biological weapons programs, and all of whom claimed to have never come across such creatures before. Meanwhile, the first sighting of the creature outside of the Greater London Area had been reported all the way over in Bristol. Soon, other cities began to join the list. Sheffield. Coventry. Ely. By this point, the death count was estimated at over five hundred people, and the alien population was estimated to have reached a hundred. Weyland-Yutani labeled the creature as the Xenomorph (XX121), but still maintained that they had never encountered the species before. When the death count hit a thousand, the government became seriously concerned with the 'Xenomorph' threat, and demanded that research continued into wiping them out.
On the nineteenth of August, twenty-three twenty, the situation worsened. A German man was found dead in his home in Düsseldorf, with similar injuries to Xenomorph victims in the UK. A week later, a French woman in Cannes. A Spanish pensioner in Valencia. The whole of Western Europe was lit up with sightings. Thousands were reported dead at the hands of the Xenomorphs, whose population was now estimated at well over three thousand. Local police forces called in military relief, but the creatures were so hard to kill that less than a dozen deceased specimens had been handed over to the researching organisations. Other companies now attempted to assist Kovacs, Weyland-Yutani, and the JMC. N.X. Tulmorian and Ashbridge Industries International were among some of the larger names to join the fight. But still, they were overwhelmed. By the spring of twenty-three twenty-one, reports had been filed in Turkey. Egypt. Afghanistan. The Xenomorphs now occupied the whole of Europe, as well as parts of Africa and Asia. The death count was unprecedented. Mass panic consumed the entire planet. People knew it was only a matter of time before… China, March twenty-three twenty-one. Kenya, March twenty-three twenty-one. South Africa, April twenty-three twenty-one. This was now a matter of global security.
Throughout the rest of the year, deaths continued to crop up across mainland Eurasia and Africa. And then: Japan. Australia. The USA. Populations soared well over a million, with deaths at an estimated five million. They bred like rabbits, and nobody could do a thing to stop them. It appeared that the Earth was fighting a losing battle. Finally, early in twenty-three twenty-two, the tables appeared to be turning. Hundreds of whistleblowers from Weyland-Yutani came forth, revealing that the Company had known of the existence of the Xenomorphs for centuries. Ordinarily, the organisation would have been immediately dismantled, for withholding information which could have potentially saved the planet two years earlier. But world governments were now desperate. Brazil, Chile and Argentina had now joined the list of countries occupied by the Xenomorph species. Instead of closing down Weyland-Yutani, they asked for their help. The advice that the Company gave them was something which nobody wished to hear. The Xenomorphs were literally unstoppable in such great numbers. They had killed more people than the Black Death, and over twenty million of them were believed to be roaming the Earth. As Weyland-Yutani told them, there was only one way to eliminate the Xenomorph threat now.
In mid-summer, twenty-three twenty-three, several reports of Xenomorph victims came in from Iceland. It was officially the last country on the planet to succumb to the creatures. People began to flee the planet en masse, desperate to escape the Xenomorphs, lest they themselves fell victim to them. In the winter of that year, world governments finally agreed that Weyland-Yutani's 'solution' to the Xenomorph outbreak was the only way that the people of Earth could ever be safe again. On the twelfth of November, twenty-three twenty-three, a contingency plan was finalised, with the intention of enacting the plan over the course of the next year. By this point, however, many people had already realised that the Earth was no longer fit for habitation. As the death count reached five-hundred million, and estimated populations grew to over thirty-five million, people from around the world began to flee. On the first of January, twenty-three twenty-four, the official evacuation order was given. Everybody had to leave the planet. World governments requested that every available ship within a thousand astronomical units of the Earth, regardless of their current cargo and mission, were immediately rerouted to the planet, to assist in the evacuation. More than nine-hundred million ships responded, from the hugest luxury liners to the smallest space tugs.
As time began to run out for the Earth, evacuation figures soared. In the summer of that year alone, around twenty billion people fled the planet. Another twenty billion were evacuated that autumn, and what was left then was largely escorted from the planet that winter. Once the very last ships had left in late December, it was believed that there could have been more than a billion people still alive on Earth, not taking into account the rising death count of the now billion-strong Xenomorph population. Furthermore, no estimate was given for the number of people who escaped aboard personal transportation vessels, although it was estimated that this figure was exceedingly low. Now that the entire planet had been evacuated, world governments gave the go-ahead for the second stage of their contingency plan. Many leaders still disagreed with the plan, but all of them knew that it was the only way the Xenomorphs could be completely eradicated from existence. And so, on the first of January, twenty-three twenty-five, the order was given. Remotely operated from military installations on both Luna and Mars, over three-hundred thousand nuclear warheads were deployed across the globe. A further seventy-six million intercontinental ballistic missiles, two-hundred million anti-aircraft missiles, six billion smaller explosive devices, and five top-secret 'Z' bombs, belonging to China, India, Russia, Sealand, and the USA, respectively, were detonated and launched. The Xenomorphs, along with those unfortunate people who were unable to flee, as well as the planet itself, were completely obliterated."
"Are you alright, Matthew?" Katie asked quietly, seeing that my face had now become as pale as a ghost. I was slumped on the floor of the wide corridor, my back against the cold, metal wall, my eyes staring off into space. This couldn't be real. It just couldn't be…
"Listen…" Katie continued, crouching down beside me. "I know that you're in shock, Matthew. I mean, it's a difficult thing to hear, and-"
"Difficult thing to hear?" I muttered, shaking my head slowly from side to side. "DIFFICULT THING TO HEAR?!" I got to my feet quickly, my entire body trembling with fear. With anger. With guilt. My face quickly turned from white to red, as red as a tomato, as I lost my temper with Katie.
"I've lost everything, Katie!" I bellowed. "That was my home world! I was born and raised in the north of England, I-I spent the first twenty years of my life there. And now it's gone. Everything's gone. And it's… it's my fault…" Tears began to stream down my face as I collapsed to my knees in agony. A billion people, a billion innocent lives, had been lost because of me. An entire planet had been destroyed, because of me. Because I trusted one of them. Because I devoted everything I had, everything I was, to one of them. What had I done? What the fuck had I done?
"Matthew, you can't blame yourself for this." Katie said gently, stepping closer in an attempt to calm me down. "It wasn't your fault…"
"Oh, but it was." I said, breathing heavily as I continued to weep. "It was my fault." By this point in time, Xena had stepped out into the corridor as well. She looked at me in confusion, and stepped closer, just as Katie had done, to try and calm me. I looked at her, tears in my eyes, and gave a warm smile. I had made a monumental mistake when I'd chosen Xena. Perhaps the biggest mistake in the history of the world. If I hadn't gone and done what I did, the Earth would still be here today. But I did it, didn't I? I fell in love with her. I left Nathan and Alan behind, left them to die… because I loved her.
"Katie…" I finally said, my voice barely more than a whisper. "The ship that landed in Dock 17 of the Queen Elizabeth Ship Port in London. The ship which first brought the Xenomorphs to Earth… was the Deep Space Planetary Seeding and Colonisation Vessel Archimedes."
"And?" Katie replied, a confused expression on her face. "Wait. Andi didn't tell us the name of the ship just then. How do you know it?"
"Because it was my ship." I mumbled, choking up the second the words left my mouth. "The Archimedes… was my ship."