She shudders. “To us, it is. But I guess when you get really hungry, when that’s all that stands between you and death. . .” She sighs, staring out the window. “That book—written by a woman with a family of her own, a woman who usually writes fantasy and romance, about the real women who made those decisions—I think you should read it. I think you’d learn a lot about humans from it. My professor made me read it, but it made the whole Donner party crisis real to me, instead of a disturbing historical anecdote.” Her head snaps back to me. “We’re real, you know. You see humans as weights on a scale to balance, but each of us has a life and a story. We matter.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.” She’s scowling again, like it’s on her to advocate for the entire human race.
“I think you don’t understand. I’m not here to annihilate all humanity.”
She growls. “But why do you get to decide who dies and who lives?”
“Who decides when I’m not here?”
“God?”
I shrug. “Maybe he made me.”
“He made you and sent you just to slaughter us?” She laughs bitterly. “No way.” She freezes. “Wait, did he?” Her eyes are wide when she turns to me.
“I don’t recall my creation. I simply knew my purpose from the start and fulfilled it. But if your God made me, would you stop fighting and help me?”
She’s finally quiet. I find that I actually miss her incessant yammering. The end of the drive feels long, much longer than the start. But we’re nearly there, finally, based on the smaller and smaller numbers on the signs.
She finally speaks again. “How’d you wind up buried?”
“Inside the mountain, you mean?”
“If you’re supposed to balance humanity or whatever, when do you know you’re done? When do you go back to sleep? What’s the end game here?”
I blink. “Once things are balanced, I’m no longer needed.”
“So you just. . .shut down?”
I shrug. “I sleep.”
“And you slept the last time because you did your job all the way? Then it was just, game over?”
“I sleep when I need to rest or recover, and yes, I can sleep once balance has been restored.”
“So you went into that mountain on your own.”
“No one put me there, if that’s what you’re asking. The noise and irritation of humans is very bothersome. Sometimes I bury myself to get away from it.”
Her brow furrows. “So, then, if we could balance things out a bit, then you’d disappear again?”
“Sure.” I find that her ongoing desire to rid herself of me irritates me more now than it did.
“And what happens to me, then? Do I get stuck down there? Or do I die?”
Ah. It’s natural for every human being, with their short spans of life, to ask what will happen to them. “Don’t worry. I expect I’ll be balancing things out for most of your lifetime.”
“What?” Her exhalation of air startles me. “You’re going to be massacring people for. . .how long?” She seems truly distressed.
“Longer if you keep making me take breaks,” I mutter.
But we’re finally here. I’ve reached the area for parking of vehicles for those going to the lake. Only, I appear to be one of the very few vehicles that’s not towing a boat. “Do we need a boat to come here?”
“Well, if you hadn’t melted my phone, I could’ve rented us one online on the way.” She shakes her head. “Before you go all balancing on me, maybe I should get another phone. And stick it in like, a lead case when you throw temper tantrums.”
“They aren’t tantrums.” I do feel a bit irritated right now, though.
