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Jake Smith stood and looked out over the grey city from his vantage point at the window of his corner office on the twenty-seventh floor for what would be the last time ever. It was a dull, gloomy and cloudy day that perfectly matched his current mood.

It was his last day of work for the rest of his life.

Most people would rejoice and celebrate the fact that they would never have to work again. Unfortunately for Jake, the circumstances of his exit were nothing like he'd ever imagined. In fact, he'd never really imagined himself quitting his career.

He was sixty eight years old and many people in his position would have likely retired many years earlier. He'd been an executive for the company for a great many years and his pension was fat and he'd managed to save a considerable sum of money in various personal investments that he'd been building ever since he was a young man. He had more money than he would likely ever need; especially given the fact that he had no family to support and his needs were so few.

He'd been so successful early on in his career that he could easily have afforded to retire decades ago while he was still young enough to actually go out and do something with all that free time. He could have traveled. He could have fallen in love with someone. He could have developed all of the hobbies he'd been interested in but never quite had the time to explore. He could have simply relaxed and enjoyed his freedom. He could have done any and all of the things that most normal people consider to be the reasons for being alive in the first place, instead of living a solitary, empty and essentially meaningless existence.

Ever since reaching adulthood he'd been driven to work. It was the only thing that he felt gave his life any meaning and structure, the only thing that had truth and solidity, the only thing that helped him to forget how messed up his life was. So he'd continued to work day in and day out through the years, putting off all of those other things that make up a normal life until later when he had more time. On through the years he kept putting life off, always thinking there would be time later.

His time ran out though when he'd finally been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer just over a month ago. He'd been losing weight and becoming much more tired and run down than was normal even for someone his age. The cancer had apparently metastasized already and spread to his liver, kidneys and lungs. He likely had considerably less than a year to live and of course he now spent all of his time regretting the fact that he did not make his exit from his career long ago to simply live and enjoy life while he could. Hindsight, of course, is always clear and sharp, while foresight can be severely lacking. If he'd known when he was young what he knew now, he would have lived a completely different life.

Now it was too late.

He'd always felt that when his life came to an end, the scales that would determine his level of success would be weighed heavily by his professional accomplishments and that he would feel his life had been well spent. What a fool he'd been. He now realized that the scale was indeed weighed heavily but that it had been pinned down on the wrong side, and it was being held that way by the weight of all of his many regrets for all of the things he'd never tried.

He'd had a very successful career, there was no denying that, but in the end that was his one and only accomplishment on the one side of the scale and it felt like an empty win. On the other side of the scale were the regrets of never having truly loved someone. Of never having shared his life in any meaningful way with anyone. Never having gone out and explored the world. Never having taken any risks or had any adventures. He'd never jumped from a plane with a parachute strapped to his back, or off a bridge with a cord tied to his ankles. He'd never dived down to a reef to see the natural wonder there or been swept down a raging river in a kayak. He'd never climbed a mountain or flown a plane or raced a car. He'd never written a book or painted a picture or learned to play an instrument. He'd never mentored a child or taught an evening class. He'd never joined a baseball or soccer team. He'd never even simply made a bunch of friends that he could go to the movies with or on camping trips or just hang out. He'd never truly lived. He'd simply been too busy with work. To be honest with himself he realized he'd made himself to busy with work.

It didn't have to be that way. He could have done anything. All of the amazing things he could have done with his life were all piled up on the other side of the scale so high that he could never see the top. They were innumerable and immeasurable and they all haunted him now that his time was up. Why had he never taken the time to really live? If he had attempted even a small fraction of the things in that mountain of possibilities he would have been able to consider his life well lived, but instead he'd done nothing but work.

Jake had been a vital, healthy, attractive and desirable man in his youth. By the time he was full grown he was 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighed on average around 250 pounds. His weight was all muscle and bone way back then and he made an imposing and extremely fit figure of a man. Now he was a thin, stick-like shadow of his former self. His body was already showing signs of being ravaged by his cancer and he looked a good ten years older than he actually was. He was now not much more than greyish, sagging, age-spotted skin stretched over a thin skeleton. He could barely remember what it was like to be healthy, young and strong.

He was gay and had been for as long as he could remember, but he had never once acted on his desire. He was gay at a time when being gay was in no way easy, or even safe, and was not at all accepted by normal society. He'd chosen to deny his desires because he did not wish to be a pariah. He was raised in a strict catholic setting and he truly felt that his sexual appetites were wrong and would lead him to damnation. They were unnatural and immoral. His views had changed over time to the point that he'd lost all faith in any higher power and realized that the human race itself was just a beautiful aberration in the universe that had sprung up on its own without any creator being responsible. He'd renounced his religion and given up on those childish beliefs when he realized that it seemed as though there were rational explanations for everything in the known universe.

He no longer needed God so he let him go as an aging adult the same way he did Santa Clause when he'd been a boy. He felt sad when he realized there was no God, not because the human race was on its own and there would be no salvation or eternal life for him, but rather because the entirety of the fruitful part of his life had been controlled by this ridiculous belief in an imaginary higher power that would judge him and damn him to hell if he followed his desires.

Those changes in his beliefs had occurred in the last ten years or so, when it was already too late to begin living as who he truly was. Back when he was young he really believed he would be sinning if he lay with a man so he never did.

He was in no way attracted to females, so this meant that he chose to live a life alone. He could not bring himself to enter into marriage with a woman that he had no desire for and could never truly love completely, and he could not bring himself to enter into a relationship with another man that he would have to keep hidden and secret because of its immoral nature. He could never show his true self to his family and that caused him to drift further and further away from them until eventually they became complete strangers. He could not bring himself to tell anyone of the way he was and yet he could not bring himself to form relationships based on the lie that he was anything else, so he wasn't even able to form lasting friendships with anyone. He could not find any way to come to terms with his sexuality and so he immersed himself in his career in the hopes that it would help him forget what he was and give his life some purpose and direction.

Now he stood a sixty eight year old virgin who was utterly alone in the world.

He was a human being though, and he could not completely ignore his needs, so over the years he did the only thing he felt he could do to keep the urges under control; he masturbated. He did it more and more frequently over time and his imagination ran through endless combinations of sexual acts with countless imagined people in ever more complex fantasies. He found that his tastes covered pretty much the complete gamut of what could be considered a sexual act. Recently he'd even begun to imagine sex with males from fantasy races of all shapes and sizes to the point that they would invade into his subconscious and he would experience wet dreams while he slept. He had become so comfortable with even the wildest fantasies that he found it hard to believe how much guilt and shame he'd originally felt even just from masturbating to these fantasies early on. Over the years he learned to accept the fact that he was hurting no one and he allowed himself to explore every urge in his fantasies.

Now that he was fully aware that it was in no way a sin or even remotely immoral to be homosexual, his biggest regret in life was not acting on his desires. Over the years society had become much more accepting, to the point that now almost everyone knew someone who was gay and it was simply not a big deal. If things had been that way in his youth Jake may have lived a much more rewarding life.

In the end he realized it was his denial of his own sexual identity that had ruined his entire life. He wished before he died that he could find young people who might be feeling the same way he had and try to impress upon them the importance of just letting themselves be who they are and not to waste their lives the way he had.

If he had it all to do over again he would make it his mission to try everything he'd ever imagined in his head with someone else and to allow himself to fall in love if he were ever lucky enough to find the right guy.

It was too late now though. Not only was he dying but he was much too old to start truly living even if he hadn't gotten sick.

He often fantasized about getting a second chance. Of somehow traveling back through time retaining all of the knowledge he had and slipping back into his youthful body and living as he now knew he should have done from the beginning. It was a childish dream and he tried not to dwell too much on it though. It was too painful to think of how his life had been wasted.

He turned and looked into his office for the last time. His personal effects had been sent down to his car where his driver now waited for him, and the office was bare and empty. There was nothing else to do but leave and begin a long and grueling course of chemotherapy to try to hold the cancer back for as long as possible.

As he looked into the office he noticed that even though the sun was not out and it was a dark and gloomy day, he was casting a shadow on the back wall. He turned back to look outside and saw something very odd. The clouds not far from his building had begun to emit a strange orange glow that was very slowly brightening.

He began to notice a dull vibration through his feet. It was like the office building was a tuning fork that had been struck and was sending concussive waves up through his frame. He felt a pressure on his ear drums as though there was an inaudible, low-frequency sound beating against them. He even felt strange in his core like something in the atmosphere was changing rapidly, like a static charge was building.

He looked down to the street and for the most part people seemed to be moving about as they normally would, though here and there he could see the odd person who was running with a cellphone held to their ear looking somewhat alarmed. Something was happening but not everyone seemed to be in on it yet. He heard some commotion out in the hall so he went out to see what was going on.

Irene, one of the girls in the administrative group, was in near hysterics. She was babbling something about it being so unfair and there was nothing they could do. A few people around her looked pale and in shock.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"There was no warning! They didn't see it until a few hours ago. A meteorite. A big one. A world ender! It's all over!" Irene shouted hysterically.

"Who told you this? How do you know?" Jake asked.

Irene pointed to her desktop monitor and there was a message flashing that indicated essentially what she had just said. There was a radio on her desk that was also emitting an emergency alert signal. Jake quickly sat at her workstation and followed some of the links and searched other sites. The story was corroborated in several locations and it had been spreading like wildfire over the Internet.

The beeping on the radio stopped and a robotic voice began to give out essentially the same information. Hours ago several astronomers had spotted a large asteroid estimated to be twenty miles across as it passed close enough to the moon to nearly impact it. It had been approaching from the sunward side so there was no way to see it coming until it was too late.

The near miss with the moon had altered the rock's course just enough to align it perfectly with the earth. It was traveling at incredible speed accelerated by a slingshot pass near the sun over a year ago and it was now coming up behind the Earth's orbit essentially chasing it, and would impact the Earth at approximately 2:38 PM local time, just under forty minutes from now. The scientists estimated that the effect of its impact would be to vaporize millions of tons of the Earth's crust, sending the molten rock up into the atmosphere where the super-heated particles would spread out, raising the temperature of the air to nearly 3000 degrees Fahrenheit on re-entry. It would be an event catastrophic enough to end most life on the surface and perhaps even life in the oceans. The meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs was estimated to be six miles across. This one was several times bigger.

Jake was numb with shock. His first thought was that he would much prefer to go quickly and unexpectedly like this rather than taking up to a full year to die in pain from his cancer, but he quickly realized how selfish that was. All of these people he'd worked with, all of their families, everyone in the world was about to die. Snuffed out without warning. All of those people out there who really were living life the way Jake should have done are going to have it all taken from them, and the vast majority of them don't even know it and won't know until it hits.

Everything the human race had ever accomplished and everything it could have ever become would all be melted into slag with no evidence that any of it had ever happened. It had all been for nothing. The universe would be empty of life once again with no one to look out into the cosmos and understand it. To appreciate its beauty. Carl Sagan had once said that human beings were the universe's way of knowing itself. Well, it was about to forget everything it knew.

The world suddenly seemed like a small ant farm that a careless boy had just dropped and it was about to land in the campfire and shatter, burning the entire population in an instant. The fragile experiment that was the human race was coming to an abrupt and untimely end.

He didn't know what to do. Really, given the timing, there was nothing he _could_do. There was nothing to be gained by trying to get out anywhere. No place would be safe and there was no time to go any great distance. He had no one to try to call though he was sure within minutes the phone systems would be overloaded and non-functional anyhow. He should not add to the load but leave it for people who have loved ones they need to say goodbye to.

There was simply nothing for Jake to do but wait for the end.

The vibration he was feeling through his feet seemed to be getting stronger and the atmospheric charge he'd felt continued to build. It seemed like he should be overcome with fear but really he felt nothing but sadness and defeat.

He'd already resigned himself to his own death from cancer so it was a simple matter to include the rest of the world in that resignation.

If anything, the fact that his demise was brought forward to happen within the hour was almost a relief to him.

He walked back to his office to watch the event through his window. The orange glow in the clouds had grown much brighter and the thrumming sensation of the pressure waves ahead of what was coming down at them was getting very strong. The meteorite must be coming from almost right above the center of the city. What were the odds of that? At least their deaths would be the quickest of all.

What would cause the rock to heat up so soon though? It should still be a hell of a long way out, somewhere between the Earth and the moon. It wouldn't be coming in slowly but would slam in at high speed. It should only glow when it hits the atmosphere and at the speed the rock was traveling that shouldn't happen until there are only minutes left until impact. That was still more than half an hour away so there should be no sign of it yet. Come to think of it, if the rock was coming from a near miss with the moon it would have to be coming in on the opposite side of the Earth from where Jake was now in North America, so what the hell was he seeing?

The vibration and glow had been building for so long it was almost as if whatever was causing it was slowing down as it approached rather than speeding up.

Even as he watched, the glow grew brighter but more localized until it was becoming an intense bright orange spot near the bottom of the clouds, and then suddenly a large glowing ball burst through the bottom of the cloud deck and was slowing almost to a stop as the pressure waves ceased and things went quite again. The ball was already darkening into an angry red color as if it was cooling off rapidly while slowly continuing its decent toward the downtown core of the city.

As it cooled Jake saw that the ball was becoming transparent and revealing what appeared to be a craft inside it. The sphere must be some sort of force field protecting the ship inside from the heat of friction as it entered the atmosphere. As the last of the dull red glow faded away, the force field became completely invisible so that there was only a ship slowly descending toward the city.

What the fuck was going on here? A world ending meteorite and now alien invaders?

The craft was fairly simple and clean looking. It was shaped somewhat like an old fashioned dumbbell turned on its end with a ball at each end of a shaft but the ball at one end was smaller than the other. It was oriented such the large ball was at the bottom and there was a large disk at the bottom of it glowing faintly blue. The shaft that connected the two spheres rose straight up and attached to the smaller ball at the top. It looked to be about a hundred feet long with the sphere at one end being around twenty feet across or so and the other one twice that size. There were no windows anywhere on it. Jake could not even see any lines indicating doors or joints or landing gear or any sort of external attachments. The entire surface was smooth and reflective, almost like highly polished chrome.

The craft finally slowed to a stop nearly at Jake's eye level twenty seven stories up a couple of blocks away from his building near the center of a park. It then slowly leaned over and reoriented itself so that the shaft was level and then it began to turn.

As the craft turned and started moving in his direction he saw that the small end must be the front of it.

Jake's heart began to hammer in his chest as he realized it was heading straight towards the building he was standing in. In fact, it appeared to be heading right toward the _office_Jake was standing in!

It got closer and closer and grew larger but did not appear to be slowing down as it came toward the office building. It was beginning to look as though the craft was going to crash into the building and would impact right on the corner where Jake's office was.

He turned and ran while yelling for everyone to get away from the wall but in typical fashion everyone instead ran down the hall toward him to see what was going on just as there was a loud crash. The craft impacted the building with enough force that it came in through the wall and shattered the windows that made up the inner walls of the office opening it up to the hallway and the ship came to a sudden stop. It was completely unscathed and it hung perfectly still for a few moments with the front of it intruding right into the building, and then a long slot formed in the front sphere that widened and lowered to become a walkway.

Jake and his coworkers all stood stunned along the hallway looking into the office through the shattered glass wall as three large creatures came down the walkway and stopped on the floor of Jake's office.

They looked vaguely like thickly built crocodiles that had been heavily modified to walk upright on two legs, with a much narrower waist than a crocodile and longer, much more muscular legs and arms and a very heavily muscled chest. They were not wearing any sort of space suits or breathing apparatus that Jake could see. They were wearing some sort of neat and simple uniform and appeared to have small weapons or tools attached to their belts. They were slightly shorter than Jake, but they were so muscular that they must be much heavier than he was. They looked graceful and moved with a sort of coordination and confidence that didn't seem to fit correctly in Jake's mind at first. He would expect muscular, lizard-like aliens to lumber clumsily around like he'd seen in the movies or cartoons, but these were powerful and smooth and athletic in their movement.

One of them had a device in his hand and looked as though he was the leader of the team. He looked around at the shocked people who were staring back at them and his gaze settled on Jake. He brought the device up to his mouth and he made a series of hissing sounds.

The device then emitted a perfectly normal, male human voice that said, "One of you is Jake Smith. Step forward."

Once again, Jake was numb with shock. Why the hell would an alien call his name? What did they want with him?

The crocodile did not move his eyes off of Jake, so it seemed he already had a good idea who he was. Jake's coworkers began to move away from him and this made it obvious.

The croc moved swiftly forward while removing something from his belt. Jake began to back away but the crocodile quickly grabbed his wrist and placed the tool against it. Jake felt a slight pricking sensation and the crocodile released him and checked the display on the tool. He turned to the others and nodded and they advanced toward Jake to stand on either side of him, but rather than grabbing him they appeared almost to take a protective stance as if to keep Jake safe.

He didn't know what to do. He began to panic and was getting ready to turn and try to run but the lead crocodile was already hissing into his translation device again and the human voice said, "Please, do not be concerned. We do not mean to harm you. Quite the opposite. We are here to remove you from the imminent destruction of this planet."

He hissed several times again and the device said, "I apologize for the way this is being done, but as you may already know your world is about to die, and we do not have time to do it the correct way. We were lucky to have made it in time to complete our mission."

Jake was completely flummoxed. What the hell was going on here? What did he have to do with their mission?

The creature continued to hiss with some urgency into the device and the voice said, "It is against our laws to remove you without your consent but I do not have the time to explain properly. I must ask you to choose without the full knowledge of what your choice entails. Stay and die with your people now, or come with us and live for as long as you care to."

Jake hesitated. What the hell was this? How did they know his name? Why was he being singled out?

"What about these other people? They're young and they have their whole lives ahead of them! I'm old, sick and dying and have little time left as it is. Can't they come with you?" he asked.

The creature listened and then shook his head while hissing for a while into the device and again the human voice spoke, "Your concern for your people is to be expected, but there is no room in our craft for any but you. You are the only one we came for. None of the others would serve our purpose. Your age and your sickness are no longer a concern for you. Come with us and be healthy again to live a life whose span is yours to choose, or stay and end it now."

Again Jake hesitated. What the bloody hell could all this be about? What did the alien mean be healthy and live as long as he wants? Why him? He wasn't sure if he should go with them, but the alternative was certain death by giant fireball. He had to go. What else could he do? Still, as he'd thought earlier, death by instantaneous meteorite vaporization would be loads better than a slow and agonizing withering from cancer. Did they mean to cure him somehow and extend his life?

The creature hissed some more and turned toward the ship and began to make his way up the walkway as the voice from the translator said, "We have no more time to discuss this. It will take our shuttle some time to accelerate out of this gravity well and we must escape before the meteorite impacts the planet. It was necessary for us to descend at a much steeper angle than normal in order to reach you in time and our craft's energy barrier was nearly depleted absorbing the heat of entry into your planet's atmosphere and will take some time to recharge. It will not be ready to withstand the heat when the meteorite impacts and sets the air ablaze. We must leave immediately but we cannot take you by force. Come now and live or stay and die. The choice is yours."

The alien then entered the craft while the other two creatures moved back to the walkway and paused on either side looking one last time at him and Jake knew he had no time to think about it any further. If he wanted a chance to live then he really had no choice.

He came to the decision that for once in his life he should do something risky just to see how it feels.

"I'll come!" he shouted and ran toward them and up the walkway into the craft while the two other creatures followed him in.

The leader was already taking one of two seats at the back of the sphere that made up the front of the craft. There was another croc seated at the center chair in a row of three in the middle of the sphere. He'd been there all along and must be the pilot. One of the two creatures that had followed Jake back into the ship sat in one of the front three seats while the other led Jake to the second seat at the back next to the leader and waited while Jake sat down. The alien then turned and took the third seat in the middle of the sphere and tapped on some controls that caused the walkway to draw upward and the sphere closed itself off again.

The interior of the craft was lit by a diffuse light whose source Jake could not pinpoint. It almost seemed to be emanating from the inner surface of the sphere.

The seat Jake was in felt sort of like memory foam. The alien that had been speaking to him and who was now seated next to him reached over and tapped something on the arm of the chair and the seat beneath and behind him seemed almost to liquefy as it began to actively and rapidly conform to the shape of Jake's body and sucked him deeply in to cradle him as though it had been carefully molded for him. Curved bars extended automatically out from under his arms and beside his thighs and moved across him to secure him snugly. They also seemed to melt against him to conform perfectly to his body. The whole thing then instantly hardened up to hold the shape. He felt snug and secure without being squeezed in any way. It was like he was merged with the chair. His arms were still free to move and he could turn his head.

He looked over at the creature next to him and the croc looked back at him with what looked like a smile and a nod as he tapped his own chair and got similarly tied in.

The pilot up front hissed some things and there were a few beeps and although there were no windows and Jake couldn't see outside, he felt the craft begin to move backward and dislodge itself from the office building with a slight shudder and then it smoothly rotated and moved away from the building while beginning to arc upward into the sky.

The pilot tapped some controls and Jake was startled when suddenly the sphere seemed to disappear around them and he saw out into the open sky. The tall buildings of the downtown core began to rush by and downward on either side as the ship accelerated up toward the cloud deck.

He realized quickly that the inside surface of the sphere and the flat floor of the cockpit were covered in what must be some sort of extremely high-resolution display material, like OLED, that was showing what was outside of the sphere. It made it appear as though the sphere had vanished or turned completely transparent but it was essentially just a projection. From the outside it must still look like a dumbbell shaped silvery craft, but from inside he could see only the chairs and those seated in them and his feet looked to be dangling over empty air as the city began to speed past below him, yet he could feel the solid floor of the craft under them. The effect was slightly stomach churning as it seemed like the five of them were all hurtling through the air on five chairs that were flying in formation.

Strange symbols began to appear here and there around them as though they hung in the air. They must be status information that was also being displayed on the walls for the pilots.

The nausea he felt at being on a chair flying through the sky quickly gave way to a sense of intense thrill. He felt as though he was on the best amusement ride ever designed. He could feel the acceleration building against his body but it was not growing at an alarming rate. It grew until it was steady and strong and then held there as the craft built more and more speed and continued its shallow ascent.

He was amazed at how smoothly the ship sliced through the air. He'd seen videos of what it was like for astronauts who were launched into space on rockets and this was nothing like that. He wished he could see the ship from the outside to see if they were riding a tail of hot gas like a rocket ship. He suspected it used some other form of propulsion though.

The ship was not shuddering or shaking and he could feel no vibrations nor was there any loud noise. There was a soft sort of hum that seemed almost to resonate in his teeth but other than that and the smooth, powerful and steady acceleration, he could feel nothing else. There was no roar and no sound of wind rushing past, there was no sound whatsoever from outside. It was eerie to be moving so quickly and yet so silently. The only sounds were the occasional soft beeps and some hissing from what seemed like status messages coming from the craft in the aliens' language.

The craft had entered the thick clouds but as it sped faster and faster forward it was not being buffeted in any way. It was as though the air were parting somewhere out in front of them and coming back together behind them. The dense cloud seemed to be much further out than the size of the sphere they were in and he realized it must be the large bubble of force they were encased in protecting the entire ship from the turbulence of the atmosphere.

They burst up through the top of the cloud deck into bright sunlight and now Jake could see how incredibly fast they were already moving. The ship must be designed to get them up and out as quickly as possible without stressing their bodies. It was like they were accelerating out in an ever growing spiral orbit instead of trying to take on gravity head on by going straight up, which would cause their bodies to be wracked by the type of excessive G-forces that astronauts trained long and hard to be ready for.

This must be the reason why they'd been in such a hurry to get going. The trip to orbit would be smooth and safe but it would take them much longer than blasting straight upward like an Apollo rocket.

Jake settled in for the ride.

He was looking forward with great anticipation to emerging into space. When he was little he'd dreamed, like most boys did, of becoming an astronaut and traveling out into space. He couldn't believe that now, at the end of his life and so many decades after having given up those dreams, it was really going to happen.

For now there wasn't much to see. The clouds were dropping away below them while they sped past at almost a blur. The sky was blue but beginning to darken as the atmosphere thinned, and the sun was visibly starting to move across the sky above them as they began to build enough speed to outrun it as they circled the Earth.

No matter how fast they went, the acceleration continued steadily without letting up and propelled them faster and faster forward.

Jake looked over to the creature next to him and saw him staring back with what appeared to be a smile on his face. It was somewhat disconcerting to see a crocodile smile, but it was obvious that he was. While the alien's face somehow looked remarkably like a croc, he had lips, and muscles along his cheeks that allowed him to show expression. Jake imagined it would be a necessity for any species that needed to communicate to evolve the ability to express emotions. The croc's face was actually quite attractive and appealing somehow. He looked kind and intelligent and the smile, combined with a sort of playful glint in his eye, made him seem like he had a sense of humor and a sense of fun. The alien seemed to be enjoying watching Jake's reaction to all of this. Jake smiled back.

The croc tapped something on the arm of his chair and then hissed toward Jake and the voice that emerged from the seat said, "I must apologize once more for the abruptness of your removal from your world. My name is Srythryn and it is my extreme pleasure to meet you, Jake. You are the first human I have ever seen in person. This must be quite an experience for you. I understand that your people have not yet advanced to the point of routine travel into space."

"You understand correctly. We started the process of exploring space nearly fifty years ago but our species was not intelligent enough to see any value in rushing it forward. Our governments began to limit funding so that progress came almost to a halt. In the beginning we'd sent men out into space in ever more complex missions to the point where we finally had human beings actually walking on the surface of our moon. Those days are long past now. It was deemed too expensive and dangerous and unnecessary and we switched to some light exploration with machines and probes while occasionally tossing people up into orbit for a while. If we'd maintained the momentum of our original push and moved further out into space in a bigger way and more permanently we might not all be stuck on a rock that's about to be destroyed by another rock," Jake said.

Srythryn nodded and hissed while the translator said, "Few species had the foresight to invest all of their wealth and effort to get off the confines of their planet as quickly as possible in order to protect their futures. Many races who did not see the wisdom in moving their development of outer space forward in a timely fashion no longer exist. Some, like yours, have been saved to some degree and joined the rest of us in the wide universe to enjoy its many wonders."

"Saved? Are you saying the human race will not be wiped out by the meteorite?" Jake asked.

"Saved after a fashion, yes. Everyone currently on your planet will be destroyed, unfortunately. It is a tragedy, and had we known it was coming sooner we may have been able to prevent it. We did not know of the danger until a short time ago. We were already approaching your planet from the outward side to retrieve you when our mother craft alerted us to the danger coming from the inward side and we had to take this small ship and rush forward at top speed to get to you in time. This ship does not have the energy to divert the meteorite or weapons to destroy it and the mother ship cannot get into range in time. Many species began their development of space by building external defenses against such an event. It is unfortunate that your people did not advance to that stage quite quickly enough."

As they spoke Jake saw that the sky had darkened almost completely into night and the sun had set behind them as they passed into the night side of the planet and continued to accelerate steadily. The sky above was now a very dark blue and stars were beginning to peek out. He was very close to really being in outer space.

He turned back to the croc and asked, "So, how exactly were we saved if everyone on the planet will die except me?"

"You are not the only one of your species who has left your planet, Jake. Once your race was seen to have developed far enough to send your people to your moon, you were deemed to be sufficiently advanced and ready to be included in the match and a select few could begin to be brought out to join the rest of us. Since that time there are tens of thousands of your species who have been removed from your planet, just as you have been, although for them it was somewhat less abrupt. They are currently scattered out in the universe living their lives. There should be sufficient genetic diversity to rebuild your species on a temporary planet while you wait for your home world to heal, but the cost will be enormous. Even with all of your people pooling their resources you may not be able to secure the necessary funding. If you do, it will likely take hundreds of thousands of your years to do so, and then it will take tens of thousands of years to rebuild your numbers. This may seem overwhelming to you now, but you will soon find that there is no need to rush anything any longer. You now have all the time that remains in the universe to do whatever you see fit, provided you can afford it."

"What do you mean 'all the time that remains'? Is the universe coming to an end?"

"No, at least not for another fourteen billion years or so. I simply mean that the length of your life has no real limit now other than the time remaining for the universe itself. Your span has been funded for unlimited returns by your sponsor. They must be very wealthy indeed. It will be in your best interests to keep them happy so that they keep the contract renewed," the creature replied.

"What do you mean by sponsor? What contract? Why were you coming for me? What's special about me?" Jake asked.

"Those questions will be answered for you soon by those who employ us to retrieve you and others like you. This craft we are on now is merely a shuttle and we are currently destined to dock with our main ship where the others await you and they will explain everything to you while they prepare you for your new life. Normally that explanation would be given before you are even removed from your natural life so that you will know what you are getting into and can make an informed choice, but there was simply no time to do it right and much wealth has been expended to retrieve you so we had to remove you more abruptly than normally or lose our investment. We still had to let you choose or we would face dire consequences, but I realize that given the lack of any real choice you had, come with us or die, it may seem more like an abduction to you than anything else. I hope that you will think of it more as a rescue and know that your life will be more than anything you could have possibly imagined. You are one of the few among your people who have been selected by the Matchmakers."

"The Matchmakers? Who or what are they?"

The lizard like creature hissed and smiled and the translator said, "They currently await you on the mother ship and they will explain everything to you. Sit back and enjoy the trip. Your life will be changing in wonderful ways in the very near future. I envy you. I have lived for so long now that I would love to have it all be new to me again. It is not often that I have the pleasure of meeting a race I've never seen before, let alone one that is so exotic and different from all the rest as you are. I have seen an image of what you will become, Jake, and I must say that I was very much intrigued by it. You will be quite beautiful.

"I have been studying your people during our journey to your world to collect you and I find the images I've seen of your species very appealing. As we approached, I even managed to tap into and decipher your peoples' pornography library that you called 'Internet' and have been very much aroused by what I saw there. I can understand why the humans are among the most popular partners and in the highest demand at the moment. With the near destruction of your race and the limited number of you now in the universe you will be more sought after than ever. I look forward with great anticipation to getting to know you better after the Matchmakers have reinstalled you."

"Reinstalled? What do you mean?"

There was a bleeping and more symbols began to pop up around them and there was a great deal of hissing coming from the craft's computer system and Srythryn raised his hand to silence Jake and turned his attention to the information being displayed while he began tapping at controls on the arms of his seat.

The crocs in front began hissing and working the controls and then Srythryn turned back to Jake and spoke and the translator said, "We are not quite at escape velocity yet but the meteorite will be impacting the other side of the planet within seconds and we must ensure we are well above the plume as we pass over it. There will be an increase in acceleration in order to get us the rest of the way out quickly. Do not be alarmed. We are in no danger."

The craft began to accelerate much more powerfully and Jake felt a lurch as the formation of seats they were flying in began to rise at a steeper angle. The earth was now moving below him so fast they'd already been around it one complete revolution. They had come back around to the daylight side and were now passing over the Americas again and it looked like they would be around to the other side once more in less than a minute.

The sky above them had been darkening steadily as they rose out of the Earth's atmosphere, but now it was as black as space and the stars were brighter and clearer and far more numerous than he'd ever seen, even though the sun was passing smoothly and rapidly overhead and rushing to set behind them again. It was like orbiting the planet at high speed in outer space while simply sitting in a chair. There was no space ship or space suit to get in the way and he could look out with amazing clarity in every direction including downward below his feet to the beautiful view of the continents with their clearly defined rivers, lakes, forests and mountain ranges passing below him all decorated here and there with a frosting of soft clouds.

None of the images he'd ever seen taken from the shuttle or space station or satellites could possibly have prepared him for the magnificent beauty of the Earth from space as seen with his own eyes. The view was beyond breathtaking. He was absolutely stunned by it.

Looking ahead of them to the horizon he could clearly see the curve of the Earth's surface now and the thin blue coating that made up its atmosphere. That precious membrane that preserved all life within it was about to have a hole punched into it the size of Greenland, and then be scorched at a temperature that it hasn't had to endure since the earth's birth.

Jake would be the only human being with a front row seat to witness the destruction of his world with his own eyes.

The front of the sphere suddenly darkened until he almost couldn't see out of it while at the same time a brilliant flash erupted ahead of them down on the surface of the earth. Even though the display had almost completely dimmed to protect the viewers, the flash was still incredibly bright forcing Jake to squint. The white hot flash filled the screen then quickly resolved into an intensely bright point which began to rapidly expand upward and outward from the surface of the earth as it turned from brilliant white, to hot yellow, then to orange and finally looked like a dull red expanding dome just beneath and ahead of them as the display returned to its normal clarity.

Jake looked forward and downward as they approached the impact and to his horror he saw a large orange ring spreading rapidly outward from near the center of Australia inexorably consuming the entire continent and continuing to grow outward. As the bright orange ring expanded it left behind an angry dull red sea of molten crust. The circle inside the ring seemed somehow sharper and clearer as though the atmosphere itself were being pushed by the shock wave out and away from the point of impact exposing the surface to outer space.

From this vantage he could see that the solid surface of the Earth was rippling like the surface of water after a rock is tossed in to it as a wave spread outward from the center. The front of the wave had so much energy it was heating and liquefying the surface of the Earth creating the orange ring as it spread out and moved through it. It would no doubt utterly vaporize everything on this side of the planet just from the force of the shock wave alone before it finally dissipated.

The wave must be traveling at hundreds of miles per second because it had already consumed almost the entire continent of Australia and was now spreading out into the ocean, but it was losing energy fast. It looked as though it was starting to dissipate as it passed the edges of the continent and the oceans began to absorb the heat and energy while exploding into a vast roiling mass of white vapor billowing up into thick steam clouds as the wave passed along into the ocean. Even though the shock wave would dissipate rapidly in the water there was no doubt that the wave had already imparted enough energy into the oceans to force them to wash over a great deal of the land on the other side of the Earth.

The red dome that had been growing out from the initial explosion continued upward and began to spread at the top to become a massive red plume blooming above the point of impact that was now moving away behind them as they sped around the Earth even faster. The plume would be the vaporized molten crust being thrown up into orbit from the impact where it would spread out and be pulled back down by gravity, giving all of its heat to the atmosphere as it passed through. The air would heat to the point that everything combustible in it would ignite. Any of the worlds forests that were not burned away by the ring of fire from the initial impact or scrubbed away by the mile high tsunamis on the other side, would simply burst into flames from the superheated air and burn to ashes.

The enormity of the forces at play and the utter devastation being wrought to the world that had sustained him and so many billions of others through its history were at once mesmerizing and utterly horrifying. Even seeing it all with his own eyes it was still difficult for him to imagine the scale of it. An entire continent scrubbed and liquefied in mere seconds. All of the ecosystems and all of the life that evolved over so many hundreds of millions of years would all be gone in a few blinks.

There was no way anything would be alive anywhere on the surface of the Earth within the next few hours. It was likely that some of the life deep in the oceans would survive but it seemed unlikely that anything on land could survive, even on the opposite side from the impact. There would not be enough food once the remaining plant life dies off and it would take time for plants to begin to emerge again.

The craft appeared to be tracking a straight line now and would not orbit the Earth again. They had reached escape velocity and were heading outward and away from the planet. Jake felt that was fine with him. He'd seen enough. It was heart rending to have finally seen the utter beauty that was his world only moments before seeing it completely ravaged. The images would haunt him for the rest of his life, however long that might be. His heart ached at the loss of all of that beauty that had been planet Earth and he wondered if it would ever recover from this devastation.

As though reading his mind, Srythryn hissed several times and the voice from the translator said, "It is indeed a sobering and heart-wrenching thing to witness the destruction of an entire world in seconds. I have seen it more than once in my long life. I know it may not seem a consolation now, but know that you will live long enough to come back and see your world returned to its former beauty millions of your years from now. By our laws it will be left undisturbed and no one but your own people will be allowed to lay claim to it when it is fully ready to support life again. By that time you will have rebuilt your numbers sufficiently and you will be returning with the wealth of knowledge and technology to take better care of it than you likely had done up until now."

Jake realized the alien was right and it did actually console him somewhat. If what Srythryn was saying was true, then by the time humans return to repopulate the planet they will have all of the knowledge and technology required to treat their home much better than they had ever done, and they would remain out in the wide universe as well rather than having all of their eggs in one basket. It would be a completely fresh start on an Eden-like planet without all of the damage caused by over-inflated population and industrialization.

It was not really the end of the Earth but a major setback that would eventually render it better than ever before and the human race itself was safe. Billions of people had just died, but many times that number had already lived and died on the planet. This was an unimaginable tragedy but the human race was not yet doomed nor was the planet itself. He was having difficulty wrapping his head around the idea that he might actually be able to see its recovery for himself though.

"Srythryn, if you don't mind my asking, just how old are you in my years?" Jake asked.

"To be honest, I cannot answer with any accuracy as it ceased to matter to me long ago. I had lived a very long time already when word of the discovery of your species as the newest sentients began to spread through this galaxy. As common as life is, it is still somewhat rare and exciting to find a new sentient species. At the time of the discovery your people were just beginning to spread from the continent you call Africa. You have been closely studied and monitored since then by the Watchers and since I knew I was going to meet you today I have been studying the information on your people they have gathered in great detail lately."

"You first heard of us when we were just emerging from Africa? That would be hundreds of thousands of years ago! You were already old by then?"

"Yes, I have lived many times that span of years and will live countless many times more than that length, as will you if you are lucky and resourceful."

"I just don't see how that's possible. How can you live that length of time and not die, even if only by accident?"

The creature chuckled and hissed and the translator said, "I have died more times than I can remember. It can be most unpleasant and extremely inconvenient but if you take any sort of chances it will happen, many times. You will hopefully take enough risks to find that out for yourself. Life without risk is stagnant and dull. My people have a saying, 'If you are not dying then you are not really living.'"

"I think I get what that means. I took absolutely no risks in my life and was full of nothing but regrets by the end of it. Had you not come along I would have died without ever truly having lived at all. But again, how is that possible? How can you die many times and still be around to remember how unpleasant it was?"

The croc paused and seemed to consider whether he would answer and then he began to speak again, "It is unfair that you were spirited away without having everything explained to you in advance. It would normally be the responsibility of the Matchmakers who selected you and you would know what that selection entails before you go through the process. We have a bit of time before we reach the ship so I will try to explain some of it. It will be a great deal of information so I ask that you simply listen and try to take in as much as you can before you pose too many questions."

Jake suddenly felt the acceleration stop completely and even though he was still snugly strapped into the chair he recognized that he was now weightless. He then noticed the ship begin to rotate around to face back toward Earth. Then he felt the force of acceleration begin to build up again but to a lesser degree than before. They must be nearly half way to their destination and were decelerating to meet up with the mother ship.

They had to be moving at an incredible speed now because the earth had shrunk to the size of a very large ball before them. Jake could see the continents glowing orange from the conflagration of the forests beginning to burn from the searing heat of the atmosphere and the air itself looked to be taking on a sooty darkness. It looked more like a planet in its infancy still cooling from its original formation than a world that had sustained so much life over its billions of years of existence.

It was difficult to wrap his mind around the vast number of people that had perished in the last few moments. It did not seem real. He had to try to think of it differently in order to not become mired in despair. The Earth had not been destroyed. It had been reborn.

Now at last the alien was going to tell him why he'd been rescued when everyone else was left to burn.

He couldn't wait to find out what the future held for him now.