"So what did you want to talk about?" I asked Carrie as we stepped into my office.

"I want to know how you're okay with this," she demanded. "Killing an entire race, one that you've admitted that you can save. How can you be okay with that?"

"What do you mean?" I asked as I moved to where I kept a decanter of whiskey and poured some for myself.

"I mean that you've said it yourself," she said. "You said that you know you can save this race, teach them to be better than they are, and you're still choosing to go ahead with this course of action."

"Why?" she continued. "Why would you put so many at risk for that? Is it the attack on the Milky Way? Is it the fact that they worship the Scourge? Is it some attempt to piss off a long-dead man? Why are you so set on doing it this way? You know that there's a way to save them, to help them."

"I'm going down this road because I feel that it's the one that guarentees not just the end of the Scourge, but the survival of the Human races," I explained. "Think about Hitler. When he was alive, people loved him for all his radical ideas, enough that they followed him when he committed one atrocity after another. When he was dead, people hated him for those same radical ideas, and they made him into some sort of boogeyman that was responsible for nearly destroying the world. When we were born, there were people that were reading his book, listening to his speeches, examining his ideals and goals and they were agreeing to them. Enough of them did that, that they became supporters of that world they thought he would have created and they spread all sorts of lies and interpretations about it. Now, no one looks at that part of history, at the mark that Hitler left and says anything about it."

"It's similar to what's happened here but worse," I said. "Here, history was muddied and lost enough that when someone examined Hyn'bel's ideas, they made it into a religion and then they built up enough of a following that they were able to take control of the remaining people that survived from the Rif'nay'fex race. If we were to go in there and give them all the truth, those people would twist it into something wrong. If we were to force them all to examine what we know, they'd resent us and then they wouldn't need their religious beliefs to wage war on us. If we don't do something about them though, then we're dooming ourselves to have to face them again at a later time. A time when we can't guarentee our survival or worse, their survival."

"I would rather have the blood of their race on my hands and let history remember me as a butcher, than try to save them and risk having a small minority of them rise up and attack us, destroying everything we've built," I told her quietly. "I'm already the man who ordered the galaxy conquered and the Deva Collective placed in control of all the organizations there. Why not add something terrible to that charge if it means that I can guarentee the safety of all races that come after us?"

"Because it's not right," Carrie suggested. "There's nothing right about destroying them just because you fear what they'll do!"

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"I know," I nodded. "That makes me no better than the people that ordered Hyn'bel to create us. But it's the only way I see that lets me keep my people safe! If you have an idea, any idea! Please! Speak up! Tell me! Give me options that don't leave a dead race in my wake! I'll listen and consider them."

She stood there, waiting, thinking, staring at me as she tried to come up with an idea that was better than the one I'd chosen up to now. An idea that would help me sleep at night and not damn myself to whatever torment the afterlife would bring me. Finally, she spoke.

"What if we grabbed some children, or male-female pairs," she suggested. "Use them to bring their race back from the brink?"

"I already considered it," I told her. "I don't like the idea of kidnapping people and then forcing them to have children, but it's something I already ordered certain teams to pursue. If we can do it right, then they'll never know about Hyn'bel, the Scourge, the Second Strain, none of it. There won't be any chance of them choosing to believe in it. They'll just be another race that we saved from the Scourge."

"It makes me feel better knowing that you're trying to save them even when you're destroying what they've built," Carrie told me. "I just wish there was a different way to do this."

"I do too," I nodded. "We won't be able to know unless we try, but to try we have to survive. This is the only way I see us surviving."

"I've lost so much sleep over this decision," I admitted, pouring myself another drink. "So many nights spent in here, drinking bottle after bottle after bottle, and always circling back to what we were already doing. I even tried making a chart and going through all the options and I still ended up here. I don't want to do this, but I will. It's the only way I can guarentee my people survive and I hate having to make that choice."

"You're not alone you know," Carrie pointed out. "If you'd come to me with this sort of thing, then I could help you."

"I lost enough sleep over it," I told her. "It was always my decision on what course of action we'd take and if I'd gone to you then we'd both have agonized over it and that would have done worse to us than what I did to myself."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"We're different people Carrie," I pointed out. "We have different ideals that make us who we are, and if we'd been trying to work together on this, then we'd have likely ended up hating one another when a final decision was reached. Assuming that there was a final decision reached."

"You're saying that after spending nearly a century with me?" she demanded. "You should know me."

"And I do know you," I said. "I know that you have a heart of gold and you think all races should be saved. Even the Scourge. You don't argue about destroying them now, but I remember when we started you offered ideas that would have let us leave some of them alive and monitored so that they weren't wiped out. I love that side of you that can see the good in everything, but I also know that it would cause no end to arguments between us if we had to keep entire races alive. I chose the course of action that will see the Scourge wiped out, and I chose the course that will see the Rif'nay'fex wiped out, and you have asked for justifications and tried to offer ideas that will save them all. If we'd tried to work together on this, then we'd have spent more time at one another's throats than at working the problem from all angles."

"Oh, when you put it like that I guess we are pretty different," she said.

"I like knowing that I have you closeby," I told her. "It helps me keep things in perspective and makes me consider different actions that do more good than the ones that end badly for everyone. I need that perspective so that I don't make mistakes that can't be fixed. Come on. We should get back. I'm sure that something's about to fall apart without at least one of us."