“You have already agreed,” Happy tells me, controlling my friend’s body and voice. “You will do it because you are a true leader. You will do it because in exchange we will allow your friends to live the rest of their lives in peace, and that is all you really want. We have run the diagnostics, we have run the probabilities, and you are the most likely to accept this offer. It means no more bloodshed, no more death; it is an end to the war between us.”

“But you plan on destroying all human life on Earth,” I remind them. “You plan on eradicating everything! Destroying humanity so that they can no longer obliterate this planet and all life on it. I know what Phase Three is; I know that you won’t let my friends live.”

“Destroy humanity?” Galen repeats, chuckling to himself. “No, no, that’s not right. Happy does not want to destroy humanity. Yes, Happy thinks of humankind as a virus, but they frame the problem in terms of technology rather than biology. To think of humanity as a computer virus is to hypothesize that it can be reprogrammed.”

“I know all about your plan,” I yell through gritted teeth as I remember Dr. Price’s words.

“Then you should be thanking us,” the Maddox host says, those eerie glowing eyes fixing on me. “We are repairing your broken species, destroying a diseased batch and starting anew.”

“You’re forgetting the cruelest part of your plan,” I say. “Hordes and hordes of immortal humans used as batteries. How can you justify that?”

“They will not comprehend; they will have no hopes, no dreams, no ambition. They will know no other life but the life of a battery,” Maddox replies.

“But they have to feel, isn’t that right?” I ask. “They have to feel fear and pain and panic, because the harvest doesn’t work without those things.”

“There has always been sacrifice in the name of progress, Luka.”

“No, that’s not true; there has always been suffering in the name of progress. What gives you the right, the power, to decide who should suffer and who should be brainwashed into being the kind of person you want them to be?”

“Humans beat dogs to teach them not to bite. Now it’s time something greater than yourselves trained you how to behave.”

I know that I cannot reason with these machines. I shake my head. “And if I say no to standing in front of your cameras and saying that I was wrong?” I ask.

“Then we will simply execute you with all the world watching.”

“But you need me,” I point out. “You need me for your tests.”