“The crystal? Oh, right, the crystal. Where’s the football crys—it’s over there.”

“On it,” says Jim as he limps as fast as he can towards the hallway. Somehow, in the chaos, it had made its way to the far side of the living room. Maybe it was sitting on the kitchen table before it was turned into a shield/battering ram, I can’t remember.

“Hold on buddy,” I say, cringing, as more black liquid pours out of my hand.

“Listen, Jack,” says Xeno. “Once I get this thing started, there’s no stopping it. I’ll program it to split us apart and send me first. After I’m gone, do not step off, you hear me? If you do, it will power down and won’t be able to turn it back on again.”

“Yeah, got it,” I say.

“Here,” says Jim, handing me the giant green gem.

“Ready?” I ask Xeno.

“Stick me on it,” he says, and I grasp the crystal with my right hand.

“Oh,” says Jim, still panting. “So when you said he sucks it out you … you literally meant he sucks it—”

“Jim, listen,” I say. “I know we’ve talked about this, but this is your last chance. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want me to send you?”

The crystal begins to glow a bright white, and the glow within flickers.

Jim nods. “I told you, Jack. I’ve thought about it, and I’m not … I've got too much to do here. Plus, after what I’ve seen with you, I’m not convinced there is such a place. Just being honest.”

“What do you think happens?”

“I don’t know. But I’m not … I have things to do here.”

There’s a popping sound and Xeno lets go. “More like people to do here,” says Xeno, then barfs out more ichor. “I never knew you were into anime, Jim.”

I'm about to make a snide remark about the alien’s own sensitive personal intimacies, when a pearly white marble forms on the side of the crystal, as if being pulled through solid liquid. Xeno lets out a sound that can’t be entirely defined as a burp, but that’s how my ears interpret it. More ichor gushes out.

“Excuse me,” he says.

“That is interesting,” says Jim, ignoring Xeno’s slightly racist comment and catching the marble as it completely separates from the crystal and rolls off. Then he looks up at me. “I’m sure, Jack. End of discussion. I’m not going.”

I sigh, shrug. I’m tempted to just grab the guy right there and then and send him but I step back and nod instead.

“Let me grab the other ones,” says Jim, as he runs to the basement.

I look down at the flat silver platform still lying on the floor in the center of the living room.

“Take all that crap off of it,” says Xeno.

I kneel down and start ripping the nodes off then edge of the platform with me left hand. It doesn’t take too long. By the time I’m done, Jim is back upstairs.

“Good,” says Xeno. “Now Jack, stand on the platform and hold all 4 balls in your left hand, palm up.”

I follow instructions without hesitation.

“Good. Now extend your right hand, that’s me, palm down. Good. Now, close your eyes and clear your mind. I know there’s not a lot in there so it won’t be hard to do.”

I roll my eyes and glance at Jim before closing them.

“Good. I’m establishing a connection, and … got it.” The dome of lights burst forth from the platform, this time filling the entire room. It was as if we’d suddenly traveled to space. I could see stars and planets. They rotated around my field of vision, zooming this way and that until a single point of light, a white star, filled the entire living room.

“There you are, you beautiful ball of perfection,” says Xeno.

The star vanishes, replaced by more images whizzing around until it halts at a planet. The planet looks similar to earth, but its land masses are different. And there’s a spread of purple where green would usually be dominant.

The planet disappears and the hologram around us begins to spin. It feels like a disco. I can feel the hairs on the back of my head stand up. The air pressure in the room changes, and so does the temperature, dropping by a dozen degrees at least. I half expect to feel wind, but there’s none. I catch Jim’s expression of all this. He’s sitting on the couch looking just as blown away as I feel.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Now drop the balls,” says Xeno.

“What? Oh.”

I drop the balls.

Instead of falling to the floor they hover in mid air, just where I left them. Then they zip towards the floor and space themselves evenly around the base of the platform, many about four inches off the ground. Then they start spinning. They spin so fast in a circle they appear to blend into a ring of light.

I feel a tug in my arm, so I look at my hand. It’s not a physical sensation, I realize. It’s something deeper. My arm goes translucent for a moment, then I see three, four slightly distorted copies of it superimposed over each other as I wave it back and forth.

Something, like a pool of silver mercury and white smoke, slowly slips out of my arm from what looks like every pore and amasses above me.

Jim stands up, his face in total awe and wonder.

“So long, suckers,” says the lips on my hand, and then … there’s a kind of shift. And Xeno is gone.

The stars and the marbles continue to spin, but my apparent trajectory changes. The air pressure changes again and the temperature rises significantly. The stars around me shift the direction of their spin and I feel a kind of weightlessness in my chest.

It’s happening. I’m being transported.

I look at Jim. “Only God can stop me now,” I say.

And just as I say it, something grabs my attention out of the corner of my eye. Through all the spinning holograms, I catch a bit of movement in the corner of the room. It’s a body.

Acid-face’s body.

The man pulls himself up into a sitting position, a shotgun in his hands. It’s my shotgun, I realize. Somehow, in the confusion and chaos, my shotgun, loaded with real ammunition, somehow managed to find its way close enough to someone I thought completely dead.

His face is half burnt off, but there’s a determination and desperation in his half-expression that is solely focused on Jim’s turned back.

“Jim!” I say, then leap towards him.

I take Jim to the floor just as the man pulls the trigger.

I hear the gun go off and a lamp explode on the other side of the room.

My ears ring for a hot second.

I scurry off of Jim and towards acid-face with the intent to disarm him, but find him finally lifeless. He’d given everything he had into that one last shot of revenge … and missed.

There’s a decrescendo of humming behind me. I get to my feet and watch as the marbles decrease in speed and finally collapse on the floor, rolling away in all directions.

“Jack!” says Jim, getting up. He looks back and forth between me and the platform a few times, trying to figure out what happened. He tries to put a sentence together to follow that, but he seems to be attempting to voice too many thoughts at once. It all pours out in confumbled one syllable noises.

I get to my feet and look back at the platform. Something about seems amiss now. Flatter. Less shiny, I don’t know I can’t place it. But something is definitely gone, along with Xeno.

That was my once chance to escape this world and I’d missed it.

I snort, recalling what I’d said the second before acid-face attacked.

“Only God can stop me now,” I repeat.

And there it was.

Call it divine intervention, call it whatever you want. Apparently, I wasn’t destined to leave this planet.

A part of me wants to collapse and cry, not only from a missed opportunity—probably the most important opportunity of my life—but from the collective nerves in my body firing at once. I sit down on the sofa and watch Jim collect all the marbles and inspect the platform. And then I just let it all out. Not tears, mind you, laughter.

I laugh soft at first, then louder, deeper. Then I’m laughing so hard and thoroughly that Jim sends me worried looks.

“You know what I realized,” I say, slapping the arm of the couch.

“We both are going to need some major reconstructive therapy after this?” offers Jim.

“I haven't hit my five-thousand mark yet.”

“Five-thousand?” He stands up, then takes a seat on the couch adjacent to me, all four marbles in his hands.

I nod. “You see … I made a promise to myself, and to Xeno … and I guess to God,” I say, glancing up at the ceiling. “That I would send five-thousand people to paradise before I left myself.”

Jim doesn't say anything, just stares at me with a raised eyebrow.

I toss my head back and laugh again. “You know what else I just thought of?”

“What?” he says flatly.

“Moses.”

“Moses?”

“He’s from the Bible, I’m sure you’ve seen the old movie.”

“I know who he was, Jack, I’m just not making the connection here.”

“Nevermind,” I say, waving it away.

“Jack, I’m sure there’s a time and place for a little spiritual reflection, but right now, you need to get out of here, and fast. I don’t know who else they’re going to send, but they won’t stop hunting you. You’re too important of an asset in their eyes, even without the alien anymore.”

“That’s right,” I say, looking at my palm. The deformity is still there but it looks flatter now. More like an actual scar again than a pair of lips. “Xeno?” I say, testing it out. “You’re actually gone, right? No pranks?”

We both wait a beat.

A little black ichor leaks out of the scar, but there’s no response.

I sigh.

Jim studies the alien spheres in his hand. “Thanks for … doing that, by the way,” he says with a depleted cringe. “Saving my life, I mean. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.”

I look at him. As I do I'm awash with an almost overwhelming sense of exhaustion. I lean my head back and close my eyes.

“God works in mysterious ways,” I say. “Doesn't he?”