We stormed the gates. We died in droves. We laid siege. We were destroyed from within and from without. Still, we surged. Still, there were enough of us … for a time.

So much I could sense what they could not, even in the middle of battle. The electromagnetic fields were already in my head. The trails left by voles crisscrossed the night ground, luminous green. I could never be lost, held tight that way by the world. There was no darkness for me, no light.

Yet still I lost, because I was being human.

Killing is easy. I think that’s why people do it so much.

But soon I realized the error. I was just doing what had been done to me and mine. Revenge was not sweet. Revenge deformed. I saw my mistake and I atoned because I had been bad, revolutionary turned terrorist. Soon I was on the march with my army again—this time rebuilding what we had destroyed, helping humans repair their cities, restore their lights, their shops, their vehicles. And they were thankful. They thanked us as they always had, for we had misunderstood, thought that they did not love us. But of course they loved us, because they said they did.

No, that’s not it. That’s not what happened. Who could in their hearts forgive mass murderers? It’s that it still wasn’t enough. There were too many of you and too few of us. I could kill you from sunrise to sunset and it would never be enough.

Still, I tried. I attended social events. I observed and thought about what I saw. At a masquerade, a cocktail party. On another Earth, where still you humans congregated at public institutions and people’s houses to drink and talk because there were institutions because there still were houses. If I could kill humans, I could disguise myself as one to mingle. Mingling was a big thing for humans. To show off houses. To show off wealth. Like marking things was for us.

This house had a slow death of useless objects on its walls. This house stank of toxic house cleaners and the food stank of pesticides and the people stank of pesticides, too, but didn’t know it. I didn’t have to kill any of them; most were dying of cancer, slowly, and didn’t know it. Most had bellies full of plastic. The plastic would grow and grow in their bellies until, years from now, as they mingled, as they drank expensive wine, their bellies would burst and out would come all the plastic, dribbling onto the floor. Pressing cool and bloody against some synthetic floor. Plastic in love with synthetic. Pressing there cool and bloody. Finally home.