“Now what am I gonna do with you…”

She could just… dump them. The garbage bag with the other trays’ contents was still in the room. Just a few steps away. She could be rid of her mistake in the briefest of moments, and continue on with her day, but something… stopped her. When she first started working here, she would have dumped them in an instant and gotten rid of the vermin once and for all, but now? She wasn’t so sure.

These were the last humans alive, she thought. The world beyond the frontier that they came from was devoid of them, the calyxans, the little pillbugs Trixie had brought with her on her camping trip for food, made sure of that. And the rest of the shop’s humans were at the bottom of the trash bag, already dead, waiting to be recycled into more readily useable materials, as all of the Imperium’s trash was.

Could she condemn a species to extinction? They weren’t pests or anything, they even had some uses; while working over the past six months she had even gotten used to their more… gross tendencies, and even started to think they could be cute sometimes. She loved animals of all kinds! Would she let these humans die just because she didn’t want to be inconvenienced by them?

No, she thought, she couldn’t do that, but the alternative was going to be such a pain! Given their reproductive rate, they would need more space than a single tray, she could cull excess population as they were born, or retrain them to not be so fecund, but she really didn’t wanna go through all that effort. Instead, she queried her virtual assistant and assigned it to find out who held the rights to that system beyond the frontier. She hated calling people, especially big companies, but she knew if she wasn’t gonna dump them she would have to find a place for them to live, and it might as well be where they came from. The person on the other line picked up.

“Carsonin Stellar Development Group, 9th Quadrant, how can we assist you today?” The automated voice on the other end, a male’s, answered giddily.

“Hi, umm, my name is Elise, I was hoping to make a purchase.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was less than an hour into the day, and Anthony was already working when he noticed the worry. The larger Titan had entered in the morning and turned the lights on as always, by all indications it was going to be a normal day, but something was… wrong. None of the other towers had any movement. Of course, no one could make out individuals in the other towers, but where usually general motion could be observed, there was only stillness, as if they were all still sleeping.

The lack of movement was a curiosity for most of the hall’s residents, including Anthony, they still had work to do so he was going to do it. It was only as the hall fell into their usual morning routine that the real shock came. Anthony was already working with his first girl of the day when it happened.

“What… what is it doing…” He heard the girl he was behind mumble. She was on all fours, and had full view of what the larger titan. He didn’t notice it at first, he was busy working, but as the girl stood up, and he lost his connection to her, his focus was redirected. He followed her eyes to see what the titan was doing. It was taking a hall and… dumping it into some gigantic container, its inhabitants streaming down in the distance like tiny grains.

“What the…” Anthony muttered.

Those around him began to slowly take notice, their work ceasing as they tried to process what was going on.

The choosing wasn’t supposed to be for another few weeks, the titans shouldn’t be taking any halls, confusion reigned throughout the hall, but that quickly turned to panic when the larger titan took another hall from the tower and dumped it, and then a third, and on she went, before long she had cleared the entire tower, and moved on to the next. Confusion turned to fear and then panic as everyone observed that the titan’s trajectory brought her to their hall within the hour.

Before long, the smaller titan arrived and began helping the larger one dump the halls. The hall was in an uproar now, some desperate few were still working, believing that they just had to work harder to avoid the fate of the other halls.

Anthony, however, was running back to where he left Liliane that morning.

He just had to pick today of all days to go out further to work! He mentally chastised himself, the going was slow, it was hard enough to navigate through the halls when everyone was in relatively immobile clusters while working, now it was a nightmare! Bodies were everywhere, moving and weaving through them proved hazardous, he was knocked to the ground more than a few times, but he finally found Liliane as the larger titan was reaching their tower.

She was sitting by the wall as always, holding both her legs as close to her body as possible with her arms to avoid having them stepped on by those that ran by her. Her right leg was still injured, and her face was stricken with terror.

“Liliane!” He cried out. Her head whipped around to find him making his way toward her. The tiniest bit of fear washed away from her expression, but not much.

“Anthony!” She cried out as he arrived beside her. She grasped his arms with her hands and pulled him toward her, careful to not pull him onto her leg. He placed himself between her and the rest of the panicking hall, and tried to catch his breath.

“Anthony… what is going on? Did we not work hard enough? I do not understand.” Her voice was laced with fear, and Anthony had nothing he could say to help.

“I don’t know…” he sighed out, their tray was moving now. Liliane looked up at him one final time from where she sat, before turning to her left side to look out of the hall with him. They were rising, they couldn’t feel it from inside the hall, but soon they were at eye level with the larger titan. Its iris directly outside, flickering all throughout the hall for a moment before its mouth moved, dramatically and emphatically, it was speaking, loudly.

Within moments, the other titan was beside the larger one. Both stood there, their monolithic lips moving, while the hall descended into complete chaos.

But as quickly as the moment came, it went. The hall was lowered and… placed onto the table, spared for the time being, as the rest of the halls were disposed of.

Liliane and Anthony stayed like that in silence, watching the titans perform their grisly work, the rest of the hall gradually calmed from complete chaos to barely repressed terror as it became clear that, at least for the time being, they had been spared.

However, minutes later, the smaller blonde haired titan returned. It raised the hall up to its eye level and just… stared at them.

“What do you think it wants?” Anthony asked Liliane, finally breaking the silence.

“The titans… want us to be with each other, they want us to create children.” She took a breath before continuing. “The other halls, they worked hard to be fruitful, but they were still punished. I do not know what it wants us to do…” Liliane tapered off, she was obviously completely confused and terrified.

Anthony nodded, and rubbed her shoulder. She relaxed, if only slightly, and they both watched the titan as its mouth moved, speaking to… someone unseen, about something unknown.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“And you’re certain that you can clean out the planet’s calyxan problem in three hours or less, without harming any other flora or fauna, or my money back?” Elise asked the worker on the other end.

“Ma’am, with respect, we are a pest control company. We can have the planet cleaned out with our detection and teleportation systems in minutes, we only have the three hours stipulation for legal purposes.”

“Right, right okay, sorry I didn’t mean to question your capabilities.” She responded sheepishly.

“It’s not a problem,” the man on the other end replied tersely. “Our systems show you bought the planet in question about… eight minutes ago? Moving quickly, aren’t we? What’s the rush?” He asked, quizzically.

“Oh,” Elise laughed a little, “just getting a nice picnic planet for later, ya know?”

“Oh for sure, I’ve got a few planets on the periphery as well. I’ll wire the costs to the account provided. We’ll be in and out in a few hours. Thank you for choosing Ryke’s Pest Services.” He said, with a bit of forced customer service cheer, and cut the line.

Elise sighed, having finished everything she needed to do. She purchased the system from the development group, bought a basic nutrient and climate recycler for the tray, and just scheduled an extermination. Now all she had to do was wait for the exterminators to do their work, and she could drop these creatures off there and be done with them. A good deed, she thought.

She looked into the tray, she had idly held it during the three purchases, and had only just realized how agitated that probably made its inhabitants, before setting it down, though, she got a little curious. Her virtual assistant knew what she wanted to see, and it placed the tiniest marker down for Elise to zoom in on.

Sure enough, there was the one female whose leg she had broken when she took her sample. From the looks of it, the leg was still non-functional, but at least it was still alive. The male it was with before was still with it now, how cute, Elise thought to herself. Her curiosity sated, she gingerly placed the tray back on the table and called out to her boss.

“Hey! Trix! Can I borrow the teleporter in a few hours?”