Champagne

Our last night on Earth was a quiet one: dinner, champagne, a movie. I had gotten the kids souvenirs from my last trip, toy blocks that glowed in the darkness surrounding the 46-inch plasma playing WALL-E. The kids' favorite.

"Why champagne?" my wife asked, sipping from her glass. "Big promotion again?"

I wanted to tell her everything, make her understand why I had done what I had done. I had to protect my family.

My stomach twisted when the toy blocks began to float. I looked to the bay windows as the kids scrambled to reclaim their gifts. My wife went to help them, champagne abandoned as she chased the children chasing their toys. None of them noticed the spaceship arriving on the balcony.

I opened the balcony doors, wind and noise disrupting the pursuit momentarily before the blocks zoomed aboard the awaiting craft. My wife wasn't quick enough; the kids ran inside after them. She followed, standing in the mouth of the ship calling for our children. I pushed her inside.

They didn't know where it was taking us. The kids watched the mothership grow larger through the ports, gasping in awe as their mother panicked beside them. She clung to me, clueless, but I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to tell them they would never go home again.

Earth was in flames below us, I knew. All part of the plan. The human race and all its secrets in exchange for our safety. One display of their overwhelming power had been enough.

But she would start putting the pieces together soon enough once we watched Earth burn from an observation deck on the alien ship. All our friends and family, everything we had defined our lives by, gone. And she looked me in the eyes, seeing the bottomless struggle I had held within me for months, and said the one thing I would have never expected:

"You bought champagne for this?"