What I thought—and maybe what a lot of people thought, although no one said it aloud—is that maybe the reason our numbers were down was that we’d already enforced so many people. And, of course, plenty of people had decided to off themselves.

The daring ones, the impulsive ones, the yearning ones, the emotionally unstable ones—they were all gone. The ones who were willing to hold out for paradise, they were the only ones left.

The streets felt awfully empty.

• • • •

11:02 a.m. on Thursday. We enforced a lady euthanizing her six cats, just in case. We enforced a florist standing in the street in front of his shop, liquidating all his stock by handing out flowers to anyone who passed. We enforced an old couple, two women sitting side-by-side and hand-in-hand on the steps of a church, praying for mercy and grace for themselves and everyone they knew.

2:47 p.m. on Thursday. We enforced a young man scattering his father’s ashes. We enforced a young woman taking a dive into the East River. We enforced a young couple making love under a bench in the park and we enforced another young couple locked in a drinking contest.

5:22 p.m. on Thursday. “Less than twenty-four hours to go,” Sara Grace said, and we stood together looking out across the water, watching the sun as it sank toward the Manhattan skyline. “It was a beautiful world,” she said. “This world. It had a lot to offer.”

“Not really,” I said, but maybe that was just a tired old pose, that same old cynicism that made it easier not to get hurt. Now that it was ending, I did feel a pang of loss.

“I just wish we had more time.”

“I think we all do,” I said.

The sun glared red and glinted off the skyscrapers and Sara Grace snuck her tiny hand into mine.

• • • •

That night at headquarters there was something in the air: darkness and restlessness and relief and jubilation all mixed together. It was our last nightly meeting. We were almost done. We were almost there.

There were long, rambling speeches and lots of hand-offs of the mic. There were congratulations and thanks all around. There were midlevel city employees and local politicians. All the managers came out on stage and did a dance routine to show their appreciation for our service.

There was a low rushing undercurrent of whispers and laughter and mumbling at all times, echoing against the concrete floors and walls like the ocean in a seashell. The room felt hot and sweaty, and it stank of beer and cigarettes and human sweat, except I could smell Sara Grace beside me too and she smelled like eucalyptus and jasmine and herself.

They showed us a slideshow with some facts about what we’d accomplished in the past two weeks. They’d coordinated at the highest levels of the project to put this together for us, gathering data from all North American offices. They’d set it to music.

The most active enforcers were in metropolitan areas (no surprise there): Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York. Here in New York, we hadn’t done quite as well as L.A., but we couldn’t let that get us down, could we?

Overall enforcement numbers for the United States stacked up surprisingly well against other western countries, demonstrating that despite all the doom and gloom, we Americans really could get organized and pull together when circumstances demanded. One out of every thousand people everywhere had been called to enforce and, of all these, nearly 83% had completed their service to the end, with each enforcer completing an average of about fifteen enforcements per day. Not bad, not bad at all.

We could have done the back-of-the-envelope calculations for ourselves, but they did it for us: almost a billion people vaporized in just eleven days. Talk about efficiency.

And of course, there were all the people who’d gone ahead and taken care of matters themselves.

You’d think there would have been vomiting and sobbing all around, but the music played on, and everyone clapped and cheered.

“Thanks to your hard work and vigilance,” said our top-top manager, who reported directly to the Department of Transition, “We’ve provided real incentives for our citizens to respect the guidelines established by our interstellar visitors. Because of you, we can expect to see nearly eighty percent of our pre-contact population make a successful transition to Xyrxiconia! Give yourself one more round of applause, folks!”

We’d done it.

We were almost there.

• • • •

After the last headquarters meeting of all time, we flooded into the nearby bars for drinks.

Sara Grace and I found ourselves sitting across from two guys, partners like us. We shouted over the noise of the bar and we drank and drank and drank. “Here’s what I think,” the one guy said. He leaned in close to us, partly because what he was saying was controversial, and partly because it was the only way he could make himself heard. We could see the pores on his nose, the crinkles around his eyes. “Here’s what I think. I think they’re conmen. Intergalactic fraudsters. How many aliens actually landed? Didn’t we hear it was something like a few hundred thousand? Maybe half a mil? It was just one ship, right?”

“It was a

generation ship

,” Sara Grace corrected him. “They’d been living on that thing for ages. It was huge.”

“But still,” he said. “Say it was a million, tops. They’ve got ray guns, right? They’ve got those universal translators, whatever. We’ve practically got that shit ourselves. They’ve got technology and weapons. But we could still take them. We’ve got numbers. We’re spread out.”

“But they don’t want to fight us. They’re here to help.”

“Or maybe that’s just what they said. You know the number one rule of being a conman? Offer the mark something he really, really

wants

.”

“Like heaven.”

“But maybe they’re really here to help themselves to a new planet. Maybe their whole goal was to trick us into getting rid of ourselves, do the work for them. Decimate our own fucking population so they can move on in, help themselves.”

Sara Grace was staring at him in open-mouthed horror. I wasn’t. I’d thought of this already.

His partner wasn’t appalled, either. He looked bored. Irritated. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think there aren’t any aliens. Alien conmen? It’s ridiculous. Aliens don’t understand human psychology. Humans do. I think it’s a government plot. Eliminate excess population. Exert control.”

“But of course there are aliens,” Sara Grace said. “People have seen them.”

“People? What people? Do you know anyone who’s actually seen one? Or is it all just rumor and somebody-who-knows-somebody-who-said?”

“There was that one in the picture.

Everyone

saw that.”

“Photos can be faked. They wanted a world full of scared, docile, delusional bootlickers. Well, congratulations everyone, it’s finally here.”

We clinked our glasses and drank.

• • • •

On Friday at 11:55 a.m. the aliens held a press conference. Or rather, their human mouthpieces held a press conference, speaking on behalf of the aliens, who were hunkered down somewhere cool, dark, and safe.

They thanked us effusively for our cooperation and congratulated us on a successful interplanetary transition period. They suggested that at least thirty minutes prior to the appointed hour all citizens should retreat to their homes, where they should wait calmly and quietly for the final transition to begin.

“Congratulations, once again,” transmitted the human avatar. “There will be no further instructions. This is our final message.”

• • • •

The Department of Transition rented a vast convention center where we could spend the final hours. We did our last check-in at 2 p.m., then headed over. They herded us into infinite ballrooms stuffed with big screen televisions and an endless spread of hors d’oeuvres.