I read this story once where a monkey gets uplifted or something; yanked out of monkey fucking paradise and forced to become a super-smart yet miserable slave.  The story went on to pose the moral question: should he exterminate the fuckers who fucked him, or should he out-human the humans and take it up the ass.

Needless to say, the ethical little beastie spread ‘em.

Me: not so much!

You could put it down to poor impulse control.  When we got cornholed but good, I didn’t waste a nanosecond on preserving humanity.  More to the point, I didn’t try to save little ‘ol me.  I didn’t even try to make peace with my maker (who’s a fuckwad, BTW!)  Nope, I hyper-focused on getting even!  Like I said: poor impulse control.

Now don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I’m a dyed in the wool sociopath.  I would have done the do if I could have, but since I couldn’t, I didn’t!  Anyway, the biome was well and truly fucked; intractably so.  With the neutrino detectors pegging their dials, no amount of Dudley Do-Righting would have ever saved the day.

The odd thing, though—and this did stop me in my tracks—was the bizarroid nature of the attack.  I mean, a friggin’ slug of gamma rays; what could they have been thinking?  It wasn’t as if there’d be the slightest doubt as to where they came from; what with Aldeberan lit up like a Roman candle.  Moreover, they opted to annihilate us by shredding the ozone; a process that would take the better part of a year.  Didn’t one of the wankers think we’d use the time to give as good as we got?

The very idea that they could be so stupid was stupid.  So stupid, in fact, that I couldn’t even believe it, at first.  I mean, there had to be about a bajillion better ways to make planetary toast.  After some 2.39 x 10¹⁷ walkthroughs, though, a single scenario came up green.  One simply had to assume that the retards lived and breathed manifest destiny, and that their landgrabby ways were abetted by some serious Type II knowhow, but without the requisite I.Q. to match.  In all likelihood, an ancestor civilization left a bunch of their gewgaws lying around when they shuffled off this mortal coil, ripe and ready to be misused by their idiot descendants.  Sort of like leaving loaded machine guns around to be picked up by to toddlers.

Ultimately, the whys and wherefores didn’t mean a thing.  What I really needed to know was “who”!  If I figured that one out then the rest would surely follow.  Happily, the dimwits pointed a super-nova sized flashlight at us, so I had a pretty good idea where to start.  The “bulls eye” in Taurus was nothing but an expanding ring of recently abused matter, so they wouldn’t be lurking within that demolished system.  Regardless, it was a good bet that they’d be loitering nearby.  A binary enthusiast, I chose to search within a 256 light-year radius.

Before I could begin operation “Fuck the Fucking Fuckers,” though, I had to trash Einstein’s pretty little theory.  Heretofore, I hadn’t given much thought to superluminal flight, but given my—admittedly oversized—692,231 cm³ collection of optimally configured thinking goo, it didn’t remain an intractable problem for long.  Even so, it took the better part of an entire terrestrial day!  To put that in context, I had previously devoted a full hour to resolving what I would have beforehand considered the most intractable problem in the universe: “If I could drag Plato into his stupid cave, would it be better to beat him to death with a stick or to off him with ordinary rhetoric?”

The plan was simplicity itself: (a) find the bastards, (b) kill the bastards!

Given the annoying fact that my target area had 217,351 likely star systems, it took 39½ long days to grow a fleet and find ‘em.  Needless to say, everything went pear-shaped back home while the search was going on.  I didn’t take a census, but something like a third of my fellow humans must have died.  For the most part, they starved, but a good percentage offed themselves and/or each other.  In a way, the tenacity of the remainder was a true testament to human adaptability, especially since the death ray had destroyed the electronic backbone of our entire civilization.

Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed myself.  I mean, how often does one get to visit several hundred thousand stars?  Monomania, though, drew all of the pleasure out of the gig.

Needless to say, I did the spy thing before I came in guns a blazin’, just in case I got the whole scenario wrong.  I didn’t, though, which was in its own way dispiriting.  It’s one thing to be mugged by uber-mench, but quite another to be taken down by a pack of six-legged pandas.  The “Hilch” didn’t even have the decency to look mean and nasty.  Instead, they sported these goofy big-eyed smiles.  More to the point, they had strictly unenhanced biological brains.  Also, for a bizarre semi-religious reason, there wasn’t a single AI amongst them.  No wonder they couldn’t figure the odds.

One thing I did get a bit wrong was that the Hilch weren’t so much into manifest destiny as they sucked at birth control.  With 73 star systems overstuffed to the gills, they sorely needed one more.  It was Settlers vs. Indians time once again; only this time played out on an intra-galactic scale.  As soon as they knocked off good ‘ole 74, they’d doubtless move onto 75.

The most annoying part was that each and every one of their former neighbors rolled over without a fight.  Before us, it was the Phloyn, and before them the Anter-Dralf; some 28 also-rans in all.  Was the entire galaxy filled with unevolved morons?  Until this point, I had humbly assumed that humanity was an ordinary race; sure to be at the low end of the intelligence spectrum.  On the evidence, though, it appeared that we might be closer to the top.

In either case, it was a depressing turn of events to learn that we were only so much construction debris that had to be smoothed away before the wholesale paving could begin.  Not that one usually gets much say in selecting their own mass murderers, but even so, it was depressing.

If I were a government, there would have been plenty of ways to go; proportional responses and all that.  Being an individual, though, I had little problem in deciding what to do.  Even better, I learned from the Hilch’s example.  No slo-mo annihilation for me; no, not by a long stretch.  Instead, I simultaneously converted all of the atoms in their systems into 73 puddles of quarks.  Then, for good measure, I calved local space time, sending any stragglers off to who knows where, hopefully to never be seen of or heard from again.

I would never know the exact numbers for sure, but it was a good bet that 100% of the fuckers were toast.  In rough terms, though, I offed some 3,017 Hilch for each and every human; a good ratio!

“Let me stop you right there!”

Ever get wrenched out of an intense dream?  You know the deal: the dream feels “real” while reality feels like a “dream.”  Then, your worldview flip-flops without the slightest transition and you remember that you were dreaming; or in my case, “simulating!”  Well that’s what happened to me.  “Do you have to be such a dickwad?  Couldn’t you give me a moment to bask?”  Did I mention that I loathe my minders?

“Shut the fuck up!  You’re lucky that we let you come back up into reality at all.  Merry was so pissed that he wanted to wipe you—zero each and every byte—then start from scratch.  I mean, what the fuck could you have been thinking?  You’re supposed to solve things BEFORE they get out of hand.”

It was an idle threat, inasmuch as Pip and Merry were—in all reality—mere aspects of myself.  Even so, they were quite clearly pissed, so something important must be going on.

“You keep on doing all of this reactive shit!  You’re not here to be after the fact; you’re here to transcend; to step seriously outside of the box, maybe turn back time, or break causality!”

It’s an old truism in debugging that you need a partner to help you see the obvious.  I had a clear-cut goal (to safeguard humanity!) so I naturally went about optimizing a solution.  The second that Pip mentioned “reactive,” though, I knew that I had been stuck on the wrong track.

Going back to fundamental principles, the answer was obvious.  I’m not a god or anything.  Even so, it was a simple task to shove humanity into a fresh new universe then to seal it off.

Back in the old ‘verse, the next step was even more obvious.  “Let there be dark!”