“And what about the innocent? The peaceful and considerate?” I barked, shaking. “This is clearly some kind of joke. Pretty crazy and pathetic if you ask me!”
“It’s not a joke,” retorted Mark and my stomach twisted. “I’m sorry about the innocent people, but… They have to die too, for the greater good. There are almost eight billion people on the planet. Do you want to check them all and decide how innocent each of them is? Separate the good from the bad?”
“The police are already doing that!”
“So you know it doesn’t work! Even if every single person was really good, there are just too many of them on the planet! At the rate the human race is multiplying, the planet will never be able to support and feed that many people.”
“I’m leaving,” I said sharply, walked up to him and tried to push his hand away. “Move!”
“No,” he refused, and then added more softly: “Not yet. Let’s sit down and talk about this. Then I’ll let you leave.”
I blinked to chase away new tears. “It’s a haphazardly put together nonsense, nothing like that will ever happen. Why would I want to talk about something as absurd as this?”
“To find out what’s gonna happen to František and Ruby.”
There was a charged, bubbling silence. He finally got me…
“According to what you’re saying, they’re gonna die in some crazy apocalypse,” I dared another ironic answer and only just managed to squeeze it out through my tensed throat.
What if I did what he was asking me to do? I’d sit down and listen to all the crazy talk, then leave and go straight to the police? I was just about to agree to Mark’s proposal, when I realised something… He had the upper hand now. Didn’t I just bring him a work folder full of material compromising my loyalty to the police…? My fear from the situation now mixed with anger at myself. How could I have been so stupid?
“They won’t…” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.
“Why the hell not? A moment ago you were telling me that separating good people from the bad is like looking for a needle in a haystack, and suddenly it’s possible?” I screamed, suddenly feeling crazy too.
“So how about it? Will you sit with me?”
I thought about the police folder with confidential material and about the fact that I’d never told Mark Dad’s Czech first name. He only knew the anglicised version, so how did he get to this information?
It all seemed like a stupid absurd dream. So inconceivable. But what if there was some truth to what Mark was talking about?
In the end I nodded, and it felt like I’d just tied a noose around my neck.
Mark
Connie’s eyes kept returning to the door and whenever I moved closer to her she took a step back. I made sure that the armchair I offered her was the furthest one from the sofa I was sitting on so she felt less threatened. I was telling the truth when I said I didn’t want to hurt her, but naturally she wasn’t inclined to believe that.
She sat at the very edge of the seat, her back straight as an arrow, and didn’t make a sound. She was pale and absent-minded and I wished I could somehow calm her down. How was I supposed to do that, when we were talking about the end of the world?
I remembered the day Andrew told me. I’d been in such a shock that even breathing was difficult; my reactions weren’t much different from Connie’s. I’d thought that it was absurd for The Collective to even try to get rid of the entire human population. I myself had called Andrew crazy… But soon after that, a thought had come to me: If only it was true! Unwillingly, I’d thought about my parents and knew with absolute clarity that the world would be a better place without them. I’d admitted that I liked the idea, and my colleague introduced me to the full plan.
“This event has been in the making for a long time,” I emphasised to Connie. “I get that it’s hard to believe it all and understand it at first.”
Her eyes pierced through me. She was oozing coldness and… disgust. I could only hope that she’d change her mind once I got to certain details.
“The Collective takes inspiration from human nature. When something’s dangerous, we kill it. When something’s in the way, we destroy it. When something’s broken, we get rid of it. We’ve always been trying to upgrade our homes and keep them safe from predators and pests. Over the centuries and millennia this has somehow morphed into us voluntarily destroying the places we live, the nature which gives us food and water. And destroying ourselves and others in the process. There is no planet B, we can’t just pack up and move when the environment we’ve destroyed with our own hands isn’t up to it anymore. People have now become the predators and pests we’ve always been fighting, that we wanted to exterminate so that we’d feel safe.
“And that’s why The Collective wants to do it. Get rid of people so that nature can recover, so that animals can be free with only the natural threat of the cycle of life to worry about, so that there’s finally peace on this planet.”
I couldn’t tell if Connie’d started to trust me yet. She was still looking at me in that damning way, but it was clear that she was hanging on my every word.
“The Collective has branches all around the world, there’s at least one in each country, but often there are more. Our event will take place in synchronization, the time and date are set. And soon it’ll all be over.”
She shook her head and laughed sarcastically. “And how do you plan to do it? Line them all up against a wall and shoot them?”
“That would take too long,” I shook my head. “We’ll release
