I'm certain my readers have lived much richer, fuller lives than I. However: I feel justified in describing my death by atomic blast as a rare experience that may be unknown to many.

My mother had actually deployed the chancla at me only once. I'd gotten expelled after helping a bully improve his behavior. The sandal been launched from across the room, had struck my right ear. Smack, went the chancla.

Smack. That was the sound of the atomic blast.

We were all there in Molly's pressurized cabin, then it was all gone, and we were a bunch of bodiless souls floating in midair, looking at one another. The world had gone completely white. Eye-searing, if we'd had eyes to sear.

We could still see, after a fashion, and hear. It's difficult to explain; without the organs of sensory input to clarify things, the world is fuzzy, indistinct. Ghostly, if you'll catch my drift. Ruhk, he of the echolocation-providing facial structures, had the most trouble. Otherwise we all knew where we were and what had happened.

The group mind was gone, then back. All of us, all of me, merged again even more forcefully. We welcomed the puppylike, angry soul of Molly herself into us. Ruhk got his bearings.

"Anyway," I said. "Keep an eye out for the Covenant souls, see if we can help them out."

There was only one. The lost, betrayed soul of Todd Preston Covenant. He was weeping, or suffering, or something; his pain had ended with his physical existence. The portion of us that was Molly approved; it had been enough for her.

She/we scooped him up. Todd was in shock; I suppose all of us were, but we were the Chancla and he was just a Human. He tried to get away, in an amorphous struggling bodiless fashion. Then he seemed to sense we weren't going to hurt him and settled down.

"They did it. They did it and they said they wouldn't," he mourned.

"You were conned," I said. We said. "From the beginning, I think."

"Not really. I was…on board. I wanted it, all of it."

"I've read about this," said some pedantic part of us. Lir, probably. "Humans tend to think they have free will, but they're just animals, slaves to heirarchy and their own ugliness. Getting out of that body tends to broaden them."

"I loved her," Todd went on. "I really did. And…I loved you, Molly, I just…everything was a mess."

SHUT THE FUCK UP TODD

"Yeah," he said miserably.

There weren't any Covenant dead. Not anywhere. We searched, and while our perception of the physical world wasn't great, our capacity to detect souls was excellent. They were underground, in some kind of Magically-reinforced bomb shelter. We could see them down there, huddled and frightened but cautiously optimistic. Had they gotten rid of us?

At this point, we realized we really were at the center of an atomic explosion. The turbulence around us, the roiling energy destroying the ground beneath us, vaporizing everything, was noticeable even to guys with no sensory organs.

There was an honest-to-gosh mushroom cloud forming above us. We were under it, watching as it spread and went up, and up.

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"Michelle said she was going to destroy the East coast. How many megatons is this, Todd?

"I didn't know she was going to. I thought this was all more of her bullshit."

"How come you didn't kill her in her sleep or seduce her or talk her out of this?"

"Leave me alone, please."

"Just kidding, no free will, I get it. Let's be nicer to Todd, he's had kind of a rough day."

As the turmoil slowed, ceased, we could see features of the landscape that hadn't been vaporized. Some particularly hardy rocks, the ground, reduced to black glass.

In the distance was a single soul, of a sort. Not like us; something odd, perhaps inorganic. It zipped up, fast, hopped into a nearby smooth, glassy hill. Something happened to the glass there; it changed, grew … plants? Somehow? Inorganic plants. And the three circles: Tuning knob, tuner window, speaker.

A guitar playing, harmonizing vocals. A smooth, smooth lead singer:

I don't want to set the world on fire

I just want to start a flame in your heart

A voice, old-timey, male, breathless and excited: "The Green Radio was on the air at Ground Zero. Could the members of the Chancla hear it? Hear the Ink Spots and their most popular single?"

We shrugged, sort of. "Sure. We're cleaning up here, will you be okay?"

"The Chancla's concern is appreciated, but the Radio had been through much worse. The Feast of Fools is approaching. This was a largely clean nuclear detonation, and the radiation is

surprisingly negligable. Can you describe the "cleanup" you're endeavoring to perform?"

"Schmendrick's teachings. She has a book on how to deal with things, and it's kind of rough business. One soul can do it to another."

"I Don't Want Certain People to Exist," the Radio said. "Do what? Erase a soul?"

"Pry it out. But you have to be without a body yourself to do it; no idea why."

A long pause. "The Radio respectfully requested clarification."

"You don't have to watch." I/We focused our voice. It was surprisingly easy. "Your majesty, are you in range?"

The Wasp Queen spoke. "So good to hear this. So good. Yes, we're ready. Storage is ready."

"I'm almost there," said Virgil. And then he was here. He merged with us like a raindrop into a pond.

Darker, more pained. Determined. Unforgiving and merciless. It blazed into all of us, like hot, hot black coffee being poured over ice cream.

Go.

We hit them hard. Sank through the earth, through their anti-nuclear shield that had worked so well.

A few thousand middle-aged Humans huddled in a shelter, clustered around monitors that weren't hooked to any surviving cameras. Like a submarine crew stuck at the bottom of the ocean, helplessly waiting for rescue.

We provided it.

Some resisted. All of them, probably, but a lot of their efforts were too feeble to be noticed.

They flopped to the metal floor, their souls bellowing in outrage and horror, drifting helplessly upwards. Being pulled.

Towards the Wasp Queen and her containment devices. The harvest, she'd called it.

President Michelle was backed against the wall, watching in horror as her loyalists simply keeled over, their souls extracted from their bodies like pits from a peach.

"We'd won," she shouted. "We'd beaten you! We'd WON!"

And then our fingers took the soul of the President from her body, his body, whatever. Jeffrey Harrigan squirmed in our grasp, trying to free himself, herself, whatever.

"Guess where you're going," said one of us. Virgil. "Just you."

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