“Okay. Here we go,” says Xeno, thick with drama in his tone. “Your world as you know it … is ending.”

“Come again?” I say, standing up. I reach for the bathroom door handle, but Xeno stops me.

“No, you can’t go out there yet. Those people are crazy. If they see you talking to your hand, they’ll cut me out faster than a fart in a windstorm. I'm surprised they haven’t already.”

“Good point,” I say, sitting back down on the toilet.

“Now where was I?” says Xeno. “Oh yes. Your planet, Jack, is on the cusp of a major, natural transition. The magnetosphere that encompasses it, and protects your frail little bodies from the void, is nearing a polarity shift. In simple terms: Your north pole will soon be your south, and vice versa.”

“Okay, so what does that mean exactly? Are Santa and the elves going to have to relocate or something?”

“It means all of you are going to have to relocate, Jack. To a new world.”

I lift my eyebrows. “Uh … what now?”

“I know a pole shift might not sound very ominous or scary, but it is. Our predictive models indicate the results could send your precious little planet into a violent crustal rearrangement and subsequent global freezing period.”

“Global freezing period? Like an ice age?”

“Yes, Jack. That's what a global freezing period is. Very good. Would you like a cookie?”

I ignore the patronizing remark. “And here we are worried about our carbon footprint.”

“Yes, sorry to break it to you, but cow farts and car emissions are nowhere near as destructive as a complete restructuring of your total magnetosphere framework.”

“Okay. Well, that sucks. How long do we have?”

“I don’t have my models with me to tell you. And they are ever-changing based on real-time data. But if I were to surmise a guess, I’d say … one to three-ish days. Three days tops.”

“Three days tops?”

“Yes, what are you, a parrot?”

“Oh, boy. You’re saying the world is going to break in three days?”

“It’s the main reason I had to reveal myself to you now, despite my better judgment. I’m running out of—you all are running out of time.”

“But this is like a gradual thing, right? Like, it happens over thousands of years?”

“Aspects of it do, yes, like the freeze. That won’t come for decades. But the initial shift itself will be immediate and devastating. A lot of people are going to die, Jack, and very soon.”

My eyebrows scrunch together. “You’re serious about this? This … this isn’t a joke?”

“No, I’m totally kidding. I just made all that up for funzies.”

I give the lips a flat smile, point and wink at them. “Sarcasm,” I say. “You’re a natural at it, I can tell.”

“You do make it easy,” he says.

I look around the bathroom, blinking a few times as I process this. Then I squint at the lips.

“Wait,” I say. “What did you mean by crustal rearrangement? Is that what it sounds like?”

“It means earthquakes, Jack. Floods, volcanoes, hurricanes. It means whole ecosystems collapsing, entire cities sinking into the sea.”

I pause again, considering. I suck in a breath and let it out slowly. “Jeez,” I say. “So is that why you came to Earth? To stop this from happening?”

“No. Unfortunately, even we don't possess the power to halt the almighty natural processes of an entire planet, even one as small as yours. But we did come here to warn you of your impending doom and provide you with the means of escape. However, you screwed that up, Jack. So …”

I point at myself. “Me? How did I—”

“The technology embedded in your hands, Jack—the thing you call a curse—you inadvertently absorbed it when you absorbed me. It’s a kind of … software, if we’re using human terminology, intended for a large-scale dual point transfer apparatus.”

“A what now?”

“A gateway, Jack, that would lead your people to a new world en masse. It was never designed for a single human to possess, which is why you’ve been having so much trouble with it. Frankly, I’m astounded that it's even compatible with your primitive organic matrix.”

“So wait, when I send things I’m sending them to another … planet?”

“Yes. A planet we handpicked with conditions optimal for you to start over on. You might even call it a … oh, what's the word? A paradise, yes, that’s a nice word. I like that one.”

“So … Bill’s okay?”

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“He’s probably swimming around naked at an untouched beach right now, eating new exotic fruits, and having a jolly good time with a bunch of zoo animals.”

I feel muscles in my chest unclench, muscles I didn't know I was clenching.

“That’s good,” I say. “He was a nice guy.”

“You barely knew him,” says Xeno.

“Yeah but … I … I don’t know. When I connected with him I saw into his mind. His hopes and dreams, his …” I pause to think. “I don’t know. ”

“That was deep, Jack. Very touching.”

I snort a laugh. “So you did come here to save us.”

“A gateway to another world is not a big deal, Jack. Not to us. Don’t get mushy on me. We’re not philanthropists. Far from it. I just convinced some of my siblings—oh, that’s another great word—I just convinced them that it seemed a terrible waste to let your fledgling species slowly die out when we could do something about it. Like a farmer moving an anthill to another plot of land before plowing.”

"But from what I understand, some of your friends don't share that sentiment," I say. "Is that what your, uh, internal conflict was about when you were lingering in our skies?"

“Oh, we were all inspired to save the human race before we got here,” says Xeno. “We were on a—to use a very human phrase—‘humanitarian mission’. But when we arrived and began to study you more closely, some of us decided you weren't worth saving. In fact they were appalled and thought the galaxy would be better off if you simply dwindled out of existence. But where others saw unredeemable destructiveness, I saw potential. I pressed to move forward with our original plans to reveal ourselves and construct the gate. But when my communications with your military went kaput …” Xeno lets that sentence drift to its own conclusions.

“Uh, huh,” I say, “I see.” Then a question pops into my mind. “Hey, how come you waited until now to reveal yourself to me? It’s been weeks since I got this scar.”

“In short, I couldn’t. Not at first. Remember the pain in your arm that first day?”

“Oof, do I ever.”

“That was me taking shape with the blueprint you inadvertently provided. After that, I had to learn how to effectively communicate so there would be no misunderstandings. We were unprepared when we first arrived and I got shot down because of it. I wasn’t going to risk that again unless I was confident. I needed to spend time learning your mind, learning how to use sounds, how to speak with this disgusting new body. No offense. And not just speak, I needed to master the concept of language and all the little juicy nuances and inflections and subtleties that go along with it, while using only your memories, your feelings, and sensory input for reference. And it's a freaking mess in that mind of yours, Jack. Again, no offense.”

I clear my throat. “None taken, I think?”

“I did try mind-to-mind communication with you a few times, but that didn’t go over very well.”

I winced. “Yeah, I think I remember that. Nearly blew my brains out.”

“Yes. And that would have sucked—oh, I like that word too—for both of us.”

“Because if I die, you die?”

Xeno lets out a gurgly sigh. “Let’s not find out, shall we?”

Something strange occurs to me. An epiphany hits me. All this information has been culminating into a single, simple terrible realization. And now it lay bare before me. But I need to make sure of a few things before I totally freak out.

“This technology, this gateway software inside of me or whatever. Is there any way to get it out, to use it to build an actual gateway as intended?”

“Yes,” says Xeno.

“Oh, good!” I say, letting out a breath. I feel my shoulders and stomach relax.

“But not without killing you.”

“Ah crap,” I say, as every muscle in me clenches back up. I raise a finger to ask another question but Xeno cuts me off.

“And no, there are no other copies of the software. Not on this planet, anyway. So don’t bother asking about that.”

I put my finger down, deflated.

“However,” says Xeno. “There is a truncated version of the software that would allow a single human to pass through to the other world. But only once. Unfortunately, it’s buried deep in the rubble of my vessel. It was a prototype we used for testing. I can sense it’s still there and intact though.”

“You can sense it? Like GPS?”

“I can locate just about every element of my vessel, even in its current fallen state.”

“Huh,” I say. “So I could use that to go to paradise?”

“We’d have to hunt down some other crucial hardware components to make it work, then reconstruct it, but yes. It would be a long shot, but you could … in theory. In fact, I could program the single rider to separate us and send each of us to our respective destinations. Me to my star, and you to your new home.”

“Oh, that’s … that’s great!”

“I think I can, anyway.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I’ve never done this before, Jack. There’s a lot of unknowns at play here.”

“And you can’t just … build a different gate?”

“I told you. Even if I could, the software exists solely inside of you, it’s nontransferable, and there’s not another copy.”

“You can’t just, I don’t know, download another copy from space?”

“Oh, sure, let me just run to teleports-R-us real quick and—no, Jack, I can’t!”

“What if you …?” I say, desperation creeping in. “Call one of your friends to come back with another gate and software patch or something? You know, ET phone home,” I say, wiggling my finger, emulating the lovable, big-eyed extraterrestrial from the movie.

Xeno sighs. “No … even if I could send a signal, they wouldn’t respond. I’ve been … oh what’s the word? Exiled. No, that’s too harsh. Kicked out of the cool kid’s club. There, that’s a phrase you can understand. There’s no help coming, even if I found a way and begged for it. Which, I would never do. We’re on our own here, Jack. Permanently.”

I’m on my feet again, with my hands over my mouth, my eyes wide (I quickly remove my right hand, remembering there’s an alien mouth there … gross.) Shock is setting in. Panic. I’m breathing hard now. I pace back and forth, (not easy to do in a tiny bathroom). I press my forehead against the wall as confirmation of my epiphany sets in.

“Jack?” says Xeno. “Hello? Earth to Jack.”

“I …” I start. “That means … that means that I …”

“Yes,” says Xeno, definitively. “That’s right.”

I suck in a deep breath and let it out. “That means I … I am humanity’s only hope of survival then.”

“And there it is,” says Xeno. “Your big epiphany.”

I sit back down.

Xeno makes a tentative squeaking noise and says, “And, you know, my life is kind of in your hands as well, but no pressure. But …before we do anything to save humanity and ourselves we have to get out of here first.”

“Amen to that,” I say, nearly exasperated. “Any ideas on how to do that? Because I’m fresh out.”

Xeno smiles again, that same big creepy smile from before. “Oh, I’ve got a few.”