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The End of the World as We Know It

Max stared into his cup a few moments longer, then gulped its contents down. He made a face as the last bit of tea emptied and with it the remaining concentration of honey. “This won’t turn out like your last plan, will it?”

Fender glowered, grinned, then gently lifted up Max’s teacup and tossed it behind his back. It let out an anticlimactic thunk as it neglected to shatter on impact. “South Morsville had it coming. Everyone’d already evacuated anyway, it was no big loss.”

South Morsville wouldn’t matter soon anyway, Max thought sullenly. Neither would North Morsville, or any of New Jersey. In a few hours, the entire world would end, and he along with it (whatever Fender says).

Maybe if They’d just planned on sending an asteroid, things would be better. That’s what They had done in the old days – before the Gum’Bnds came along. You lose the World Series, they shove an asteroid in your direction and call it a day. The APEs changed all that, cleaned everything up.

“You coming or not?” Fender asked.

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