Ah, finally something he knew a little bit about. "So it wasn't a voluntary agreement. They were forced to join. Alpha's a person? One of these stations?"

A part of Jess thought it likely said something about him that a holiday celebration covering up a bloody history could give him a point of reference, make her world feel more real to him, more believable. Human history was littered with the bodies of people sacrificed for the greater good or for superficial agendas, and every other reason in between. That was the same in his world, and in hers.

It didn't make contemplating Egypt and Great Britain's destruction any more comfortable, though. He tried not to think about an Earth turned into an unrecognizable graveyard of bomb craters and forgotten cities. For as selfish and destructive as the human race could be, they were also capable of great beauty and feats of ingenuity: the pyramids, Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, Michelangelo's Pieta. And books--so many original books that took the reader into the mind of another person in a way no other medium could. Worlds within pages.

A world where all of that had turned to dust... Jess frowned into the distance, finding he didn't have anything else to say about it.