The dream started as it always did.  She was walking along a 
road, the soaring skyline of a city in the distance, the 
ground oddly spongy.  If she didn't keep her pace up, it 
would suck at her shoes, and she would sink in, mired to her 
ankles.  If she stopped, she would surely drown in it.  So 
she walked and walked, the road dissolving behind her.  
Finally, as she approached the city, the ground became firm, 
and she slowed with fatigue and relief.  The colors of the 
city were harsh and edgy, the buildings angular.  A child 
erupted out of the lobby of a nearby building, laughing, 
oblivious to her presence.  She called out, but the child ran 
on without responding, without hesitating.

A woman exited the building next, perhaps the child's mother, 
and this time she strode up to the woman, asked her pointedly 
where she was.  The woman only called after the child, not 
even looking her way.   Her irritation began to rise at the 
rude behavior, and she pressed onward, hailing passersby one 
by one.  None of them responded.  None seemed to even see 
her.  

Gradually, the irritation became replaced by a faint dread.  
She was invisible to these people, and she didn't know why.  
The single child and her mother had grown to a trickle, then 
a stream, then a torrent of people, all pouring out doorways 
and down fire escapes, all heading in the same direction.  In 
spite of being somehow not of them, she was still drawn along 
by their current.  The crowd thickened and surged, and the 
dread was joined by a tinge of claustrophobia.  She had the 
certain sensation that they were all heading for some type of 
danger, but when she tried to turn back, away from their 
destination, she found herself unable to do so.  Where once 
the ground had sucked at her feet, now she was unable to feel 
it at all, the scenery seeming to pass of its own accord 
behind her, rather than her walking forward through it.  The 
speed increased impossibly, buildings and lamplights blurring 
in her peripheral vision, all illusion of control lost.  
Dread began to build toward panic.  Just when she was certain 
she would scream at the terrifying sensation, the world 
jolted to a stop.

She was in a park.

The people were arrayed calmly, passively, sitting cross-
legged on the grass, lined up in rows and columns with 
impossible precision.  Here, even the children were muted, 
and no one sat close enough to touch another.  Only she 
remained standing, walking tentatively among them, between 
them, looking down into their beatific faces and trying to 
recover her nerves.  They seemed expectant, patient, 
unafraid.  As she walked, she came again to the little girl 
she had first seen when she entered the city, and crouched 
down in front of her, peering intently into her face.  
Unexpectedly, the little girl became aware of her, met her 
eyes.  

"Why are we here?" she asked.

In answer the little girl smiled angelically, and pointed 
over her shoulder, into the sky.

She turned, seeing a rapidly growing smudge on the horizon.  
The sky darkened, and a dry wind began to blow.  Her unease 
returned a thousand-fold, and she instinctively picked up the 
child and began running away from the darkness, hurtling 
between the rows of eager faces, arms raising to the sky like 
supplicants.  The darkness fell rapidly, then, but just as 
she stumbled, the sky broke open with harsh, sodium colored 
light.  It washed out the faces of the people, the colors of 
their clothing.  Everything was shades of gray.  

Not everything.  

The healthy apricot tone of her own hand stood out in stark 
contrast against the child's clothing, where she gripped her.  
She looked down.  The grass was still a lush green.  The 
color had washed out of the people, but not out of the world.  
With hideous certainty, she knew it was an omen.  She set the 
child down, still gripping her hand tightly, and began trying 
to rouse the people.

"You have to leave!  Run!  It's going to kill you!"  The 
words started as a scream, but left her throat a strangled 
whisper.  She ran among them, pushing and prodding 
indiscriminately.  "Leave!  Run!"  But for the little girl, 
they all remained oblivious to her, focused on the sky.  
"Please..." she pleaded, "please."  Tragedy and impotence 
raged in her, emerging as terrible sobs.  She again picked up 
the single child, anxious to save even one, and ran as fast 
as her hitching breath would allow, although she no longer 
knew which way was out.  Far down the row, a figure stood, 
silhouetted by the cold yellow light.  She froze, but the 
figure beckoned to her, and she ran to him.  

"Can you see me?" she asked, as she approached.

"Yes," he replied calmly, reaching for the child.  
Inexplicably, she trusted him, and handed the little girl 
away.  She settled on his hip, with her pudgy arm hooked 
around his neck, once again in living color, as was the man.  
She couldn't see his face clearly, but he seemed familiar.  

"Do I know you?" she asked.

"You've always known me.  You've just forgotten," he said, 
shifting the child into a more comfortable position.  He 
smiled at her, then turned back.

"You have to save more than one," he said gravely.  "You have 
to save them all."

"I tried.  I tried, they won't listen to me," she wailed.

"You have to find the key.  You're very close, but you have 
to hurry.  Time is short."

"I don't understand.  You have to help me.  Please, come with 
me, maybe they'll listen to you."

"I'm always with you," he said gently.  With his free hand, 
he gripped her shoulder, and a sense of peace and confidence 
radiated into her from the touch.  "I'm always with you," he 
repeated, "but you have to hurry."  As she stared at him, he 
began to fade from view, wavering into transparency, the 
peace dissolving along with his fingers.  "Hurry," the wind 
seemed to whisper, as he vanished from view.  She stared at 
the place where he had been, and finally turned back to the 
rows of people.  None remained upright, but all lay with dead 
eyes open to the sky, disfigured, bleeding, blemished, 
oozing, broken, sunken, twisted, and ruined in every way that 
a body could be, carpeting the world as far as she could see.

"Noooo!!!!" she cried out, running aimlessly in search of a 
single survivor.  "No, no, no..."  

On the horizon, a flash of light flared blindingly, then 
raced toward her in a searing and smoky wall of orange.  She 
shrieked as the flames engulfed her, shrieked louder when 
hands reached through the fire, shaking her relentlessly at 
the shoulders, calling out "Dr. Charles!  Dr. Charles!"

She snapped awake.

David's concerned and frightened face was inches from her 
own, his fingers digging painfully into her shoulders.  She 
found herself unreasonably furious at his presence.

"You shouldn't have come in here, David," she said coldly.

"I -- I'm sorry.  Usually you wake up, but you've been 
screaming for a while, and --"

"I don't need a nursemaid, David.  Please leave."

"I just..." his brows furrowed as he tried to understand the 
rebuff.

"I'll be downstairs in thirty minutes.  Don't make me ask you 
again."

His wounded expression gradually hardened, and he rose 
stiffly, muttering to himself as he crossed to the bedroom 
door, shutting it behind him.

When he was gone, she was careful to cry quietly.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Thirty minutes later, precisely, Dr. Charles entered the lab, 
crisp and composed.  David, his back turned as he manipulated 
the readouts on his console, did not greet her.  His 
shoulders were set higher than usual, his posture stiff, and 
she knew that he was angry over their earlier exchange.  She 
sighed inwardly.  It was inappropriate.  She was going to 
have to put an end to his staying over.  She briefly 
considered discussing it with him, but another look at his 
rigid back convinced her to just wrap up work earlier today, 
early enough to send him home. 

Resolutely she turned to her own console, determined to make 
productive use of the day, in spite of the images that she 
had not entirely succeeded in banning from her mind.  She 
knew where they came from, knew exactly where she could find 
the photographs that must have inspired them.  And yet she 
couldn't shake the feeling that her dream was about the 
future rather than the past.

Thankfully, the challenge of the research crowded out the 
troubling thoughts, and seemed to act as a balm for David as 
well.  At least, he didn't hesitate when she called him over 
to review her latest finding.

"Based on your studies of comparative genomics, what would 
you expect this to code for?" she asked, showing him a 
collection of sequences she had isolated from the enormous 
genome.  He studied it intently for several minutes and 
concluded, "Something ocular.  Processing visible light.  
Eyes."

She brought up another collection.  "And this?"

"Well...  Eyes again, I think.  Different though."  He 
pointed to a specific section of code.  "I would guess from 
this section here that maybe more of the spectrum would be 
visible using this design.  Infrared, at least.  Maybe 
lower."

She nodded, thoughtfully.  "And this?" she asked, bringing up 
a third collection.  He was quick to spot the similarities 
this time.  "More eyes.  In fact," he studied the third code 
segment carefully, "very similar to the human coding.  What's 
going on?"

"I'm not sure," she confessed, "but I've got an idea that 
what we're looking at is even more complex than we'd 
imagined.  I think this DNA describes three different 
species.  When I began searching for grossly recognizable 
ocular coding, at first I thought the number of matches 
returned was an indication that my search parameters weren't 
sufficiently reduced.  But I've been studying the returned 
sequences, seeing which fit together in reasonable groupings 
for an organ like an eye, and I keep coming up with three 
distinctly different versions."

"But this entire genome has been found in individual Gray 
cells, when they've been available.  In the compressed form, 
anyway.  How could it be for multiple species?"

"We know what the Grays look like David.  Ever seen one with 
six eyes?"

He shook his head.

"I'm beginning to think we might be looking at a species that 
operates somewhat like the Siphonosphores."

"Jellyfish?"

"Not jellyfish.  Like the Portugese Man-of-War. Physalia 
Physalis.  A colonial hydroid species.  The Portugese Man-of-
War isn't actually a single animal.  It's a colony of 
cooperating zooids, each performing a specific function for 
the colony as a whole.  The labor is divided; some capture 
food, some digest, some form the float.  But they're all born 
from a single egg."

"We've never seen any evidence that the Grays operate in that 
kind of symbiosis with another species, though," David 
challenged.  

Dr. Charles pursed her lips slightly, considering the point.  
"That's true."  Her eyes roamed the ceiling above her while 
she thought, as though she might find the answer there.  At 
last she shrugged, dropping her crossed arms back to the 
console.  "Maybe it's vestigial," she theorized.  "It still 
suggests an interesting framework to focus the research."

He considered the implications for a few moments.  "It's kind 
of a leap, though.  Supposing this genome does describe three 
species, they'd all be very complex.  Much more so than the 
kind of zooids you're describing.  How would cooperation be 
achieved?"

"I don't know," she replied, "but it might be helpful if we 
could acquire some specimens of siphonosphore to study."  She 
sighed.  "Not likely, though.  They used to be quite common 
along the shores of the south-east and the gulf coast, but 
the oceanic ecosystems have been too greatly altered by the 
power plants.  We'd need to go to the Australian continent, 
and there's no way to do that without undertaking a 
spectacularly long sea journey.  We'll have to make do with 
whatever documented information we can find."

"It might still be worth trying locally," he suggested.  "The 
oceans have changed, but they're not dead.  In fact," he 
added, offhand, "I'd say most of the planet's ecosystem is a 
lot better off than it used to be.  There were just too many 
people taxing the resources before.  The current population 
is a lot more reasonable."

It was a modern conceit, a widely accepted fact of life, and 
exactly the wrong thing to say on this particular morning.  
Dr. Charles felt a slow, cold fury rising in her.  She 
battled to keep her outward appearance calm.  "Come with me," 
she ordered, heading off to her archives.  He followed her, 
surprised to have to double-step to keep up with her quick, 
clipped pace.

"Who is the most important person in your life?" she asked 
him, as she opened the door to the dusty smelling room.  

"My grandmother," he replied immediately.

"And after that?" she asked.

"Well, Jerry," he answered, puzzled by the direction of her 
questioning.

She entered the room and began shifting boxes of documents 
from one of the higher shelves.  He hung back in the doorway, 
beginning to sense the onset more unpleasantness.

"After that?" she pressed.

"Well, you," he answered softly.

A nice try, she thought, but not enough to make her turn 
aside from the lesson she would teach today.

"How about your students?  In the lab?" she continued.  "You 
feel quite fraternal toward them, don't you?"

"Yeah," he answered cautiously, "I like to help them out."

"And the rest of the University student body?  You at least 
identify with them as a group, don't you?"

"Uh, huh.  What's the point here, Dr. Charles?" he asked, 
beginning to feel exasperated.

"And you still think life in the West makes a lot more sense 
than life here in the East, don't you?  Would you say that 
Westerners are the largest group you feel a kinship with?"

Annoyed now, his response took on a haughty tone.  "The 
largest group I feel a kinship with would be all intelligent 
species," he snapped.  

Wordlessly, she handed the stack of photos she had unearthed 
from one of the oldest looking file boxes in the room.  They 
were fragile, in spite of the care with which they had been 
kept.  She knew that she could as easily have shown him the 
electronic versions she kept in her local data cache, but she 
also knew that the physical act of holding the originals, 
their age and authenticity apparent in the brittle and 
crackling paper, its discolored emulsion lifting from the 
backing, would have a greater impact on him.

"I want you to imagine for a moment who it is that you're 
looking at in these photos," she instructed.  

He lifted the first off the stack, his mind having trouble 
making sense of the unfamiliar imagery in the faded 
photograph.  It was a distant, wide shot, of a city street.  
It was littered with lumps of something, in a hodge-podge of 
colors.  The next photo was closer, and the lumps became 
identifiable as bodies.

"In all the monuments we have to the past," she asked, "why 
is this never seen?  Why is everything that happened reduced 
to a few sterile, empty cities?"

He continued paging through the stack, the photos becoming 
more gruesome and detailed as he went.  He lingered over one 
that was clearly taken in some kind of stadium, the rotting, 
boil-covered crowds hanging face down over the seatbacks, the 
posture of many indicating that they had been trying to climb 
over them.  The one visible stairway was stacked with bodies 
clambering toward an invisible exit.  Standing among them was 
a young girl, perhaps 13 or 14 years old, the horror and 
panic on her screaming face carrying clearly across the 
intervening centuries.

"They look like they've been rotting for weeks, don't they?" 
she said in a hard-edged voice.  "It happened in minutes.  
That girl was one of the few immune, and she got to watch 
about 60,000 people die horribly around her."

There were more pictures, some of them depicting the results 
of clearly bloody combat.  Terrible wounds blown through 
people's bodies by some sort of projectile, gashes from the 
wielding of horrible cutting blades.

David began to feel ill.

"I want you to stop for a minute and imagine what it would be 
like to walk through your hometown, and realize that there 
were only 25 people left alive.  Walk through neighboring 
towns to find spotty survival, and most of those still 
walking in a daze of wounded psyches that will never heal.  
Imagine the panic of not being able to find the people you 
love."

The photos were transitioning to images of individuals now, 
close-ups of faces with blank staring eyes.  Faces that had 
once been someone, not the impossible to comprehend piles of 
bodies.

"Imagine the guilt of surviving when half of the population 
didn't.  Half of all intelligent species," she snorted, 
throwing his words back at him.  "Half of all Westerners," 
she said, more seriously.  "Most of the University."

The faces in the photos were getting younger.  A young man, 
perhaps 19 or 20, with a thin, wispy mustache sat holding the 
hand of a younger woman, a dazed look on his face.  Her body 
was missing from the waist down.

"All of your students," she pressed, her voice beginning to 
quaver.

"And me.  And Jerry."

He reached the bottom of the stack.

"And your grandmother."

When he looked up at her, his eyes were wet.

"The next time you're tempted to consider the elimination of 
half the planet's population some kind of ecological boon," 
she said, her anger returning, "think very, very hard about 
what that kind of loss really means."

She took the photos back from his limp hand, and began 
carefully returning them to their storage.

"Go home, David," she said, without meeting his eyes.

He sat, stunned and unmoving.

"Go *home*," she emphasized.  "We'll get nothing further done 
today.  And I can't really stand to look at you right now," 
she added bitterly.

Slowly, dazed, he stood.  "Dr. Charles," he began, and 
stopped, finding himself speechless.

"Just go," she whispered, unwilling to show him her weakness 
a second time that day, and clinging valiantly the remaining 
shreds of her anger, for the strength they gave her.

Silently, he turned and walked out of the room.  She listened 
to his heavy footfalls echo down the hallway, and the quiet 
snick of the closing front door.  Then she sagged to the 
ground, and did not move again for hours.