MICHAEL MAIELLO

Global Macro

Gail had a problem -- she could not lie to FBI investigators because lying, rather than any hard to prove crime like insider trading, is what sent Martha Stewart prison. This is how they get you when they don't have the goods. They get you to lie about where you were, who you emailed, who you called, or who helped your autistic son gain admission to an exclusive and well-equipped boarding school in western Connecticut, potentially saving your marriage though costing your husband his Porsche.

The problem with not lying is telling the truth. That's not always so easy. Telling the truth can get you into as much trouble as anything. But she had invited these people into her home and had served them coffee from her very own, office-quality K-cup machine.  She offered them almond milk, with apologies, because she kept a dairy free household, as well as expensive, gluten-free biscotti, because she kept a gluten free household.

She had a secret she couldn't tell because she wouldn't be believed. It irked her, given how the marketing girl at work actually turned invisible for no reason at all, for random periods of time, often during meetings, and people barely noticed. Also, there was a guy in the office who worked in ops, clearing trades, whose mind left his body during a mindfulness exercise at the summer offsite and never returned, and nobody complained about that or asked questions either.

There are two FBI agents, as they apparently come in pairs, like on television or in the movies. The man is absurdly young, probably recently bumbled out of Federal Bureau of Investigation University. His suit is at least two sizes too big, and he really likes the almond milk and healthy cookies. Gail imagined that the man had recently lost a lot of weight. His name was Benjamin.

The woman is African American, wearing a form-fitting green business jacket and skirt and not afraid to request herbal tea instead of coffee, which Gail cooked up for her in the microwave despite having a teapot just sitting there on one of her burners. Her name was Mellody, spelled with two Ls, LaSalle, also spelled with multiple Ls.

Gail kept the FBI agents in the living room. They were not like vampires, she figured, free to wander around and poke into things just because she had invited them inside.

"It's not every day that the FBI comes to visit," said Gail, not lying.

"Thanks for seeing us," Mellody sipped her tea. 

Benjamin fumbled in his jacket for his phone, which he dropped onto Gail's glass-topped coffee table. He then picked it up, turned on a recording app, and placed the phone gently between them all, with apologies.Gail had sat them both on the couch with the enveloping cushions, so that they were sucked downward towards the Earth. Gail sat on a higher, rigid handcrafted chair.

"A lot of people won't just see us," said Mellody.  "Makes it hard to have conversations, you know?"

"I'm an open book," said Gail. "So, what can I do for you, Scully and Mulder?"

Benjamin looked confused.

"Forgive my young partner, Gail," Mellody said. "He doesn't know who Scully and Mulder are. Kid just got his driver's license."

"That’s not because I'm young," Benjamin protested. "It's because I grew up in Manhattan without a TV. My parents didn't even own a car until I went to college, and they moved to Jupiter."

"Kids parents live on Jupiter, and he doesn't know The X-Files," sighed Mellody.

"Florida," said Benjamin. "Jupiter, Florida."

Gail could not believe they were recording this. "Well," she sipped coffee, "I suppose pop culture is off the table for this group, so how can I help?"

"Tell me how business has been," said Mellody.

"My hedge fund?"

"Mmmhmm."

"Lousy," said Gail. "There's no such thing as insider trading in commodities, but, believe me, if that's what I'd been up to, you'd have to call it a victimless crime."

"That’s very funny," said Benjamin. "But we are interested in the sources of your ideas."

"Jumping right into it?" said Mellody.

"I mean," explained Benjamin, "when somebody's right all the time, that raises red flags."

"And what if I'm always wrong?" asked Gail. "So wrong it's suspicious?"

"Remember, he just stopped wearing training pants, Gail," Mellody said.

"Hey," said Benjamin.

"That means be quiet," said Mellody.

For a moment, everyone was quiet and Gail snickered imagining Benjamin in Pull-ups and Benjamin blushed and then Mellody finished her tea in a gulp. 

"We're not criticizing your choices," Melody said. "We don't know about investments. Neither of us work with the Securities and Exchange Commission."

"Okay," said Gail. "I'm mostly regulated by the CFTC anyway."

"See?" said Benjamin. "I don't even know what that is."

"You don't even know The X-Files," said Gail, growing comfortable. Then Gail realized that all of this banter was likely psy-ops, designed to make her feel comfortable. It's why they wanted to meet in her living room and didn't mind sitting on the low couch and pretending to like the gluten free cookies. It's why, when Gail's annoying mop of a dog escaped the mud room and skittered over to bark at Benjamin that he just laughed and said, "Cute little doggie, what's its name?"

"Hayek," said Gail. She had named her Yorkie after the economist and author of The Road to Serfdom. "He's named after an Austrian economist."

"All right," said Mellody. "Just tell us about your process."

"I use a mosaic research approach," said Gail. "It's a term that clients like to hear when I want to tell them I read a lot. Bloomberg. The Journal. Reports from the Bank of International Settlements. A blog written by a small Indian sugar producer that I have to sift through Google Translate.  It all adds up to a worldview and that worldview informs my trades. It's all public information. People think you need a secret line on something, but the world reveals itself in its details, which are so vast, they are mostly hidden in plain sight."

"That's beautiful," said Benjamin.

"And what's your worldview?" asked Mellody.

"Impending economic collapse," said Gail. "Mass joblessness. Food shortages. Social unrest. Oligarchs clinging to wealth and withdrawing to equatorial climates. Hyperinflation in the United States as people realize that the dollar is just an idea with no backing other than the U.S. military. I'm giving you my unvarnished view here. I tell my investors there are tensions and stress points and pockets of risk. But you asked, and I think the world is going to collapse."

It felt good for Gail to unburden the apocalypse that loomed within her. She didn't talk much about it except to her special friends and to her absurdly tall husband, Clive.

Benjamin led, "And this view has been…"

"Not appreciated by a bull market," said Gail. "You know, I position myself for collapse and the world just expects everything to keep going up and up.  You ask most people who get their news from the Internet, and they mostly see a rosy future. Endlessly smarter smartphones. Gene editing so that you never have to die. Self-driving cars that will probably kill you despite the gene editing."

"Ah," said Benjamin. "You're a pessimist."

"I just know how fragile things are. Imagine this, because it's not far fetched -- the president and Congress can't agree on a budget so the government shuts down. The workers go home without pay. It's happened before, right? No big deal. But say it lasts months. Say the SEC has nobody there to process paperwork. Now a large American consumer company with a captive financing arm needs to refinance its bonds, but it can't because nobody from the SEC will approve the papers. The company fails to refinance.  Everybody thinks of it as a maker of mouthwash and deodorant, but they're also an international credit card lender and they own your mortgage and they default. Boom. It could happen."

"Have you always had this outlook?" This time it's Mellody. Gail wondered if Mellody wanted more tea, but didn't want to extend the meeting with second helpings. Hayek sat at Benjamin's feet, waiting for affection or some dropped cookie.

"For awhile," said Gail.

"Did something happen that--" Benjamin began.

But Mellody obviously thought this was the wrong question so she broke in with, "If you really believe this, why the nice house in Connecticut? The kid in boarding school? Shouldn't you be in a bunker with coffee and bullets?"

"I've made preparations," said Gail, and she had no intention of getting into the details because they embarrassed her and she would not have wanted any of it to get back to her clients through some FBI channel to the press through Wikileaks or whatever it is the kids had been doing to humiliate innocent hedge fund managers in those days. "So, I hope this has been helpful," Gail moved to stand.

"Oh, we have more time to talk," said Mellody.

"But I have a thing," said Gail. "Zumba."

"One of those robots that vacuums the floor?" said Benjamin.

"I have one of those, too," said Gail. "Three of them."

"Cool," said Benjamin.

"It's an exercise class," said Mellody. "Never hurts to be in shape for armageddon."

"Always be prepared," said Gail.

Soon, they were gone. Gail had lied about the Zumba class, but she didn't think that would have counted as an actionable lie. She really wanted the FBI agents gone before Clive came back with the slab of wood he had gone two towns over to purchase, which he would haul into the basement and then spend months buffing and sanding into, she thought, a table. Clive had once traded futures for Goldman, but it'd been a long time since he’d had to do anything like that and he had wanted to devote himself full time to raising Derek, which had really worked for a bright, happy while, but fragility had emerged as Derek grew older and Gail had just never agreed to Clive's idea about treating him with medicinal marijuana. Now with Derek at school, Gail and Clive had time to work on their relationship but what they really needed was a vacation but they both felt too guilty to just skip the country on Derek. Besides, Gail had her work.

That night, after all his lumbering with his lumber, Clive took Gail to an authentic red sauce Italian restaurant, as they had both agreed to have fun, but then they chickened out and neither ate any bread, they split an antipasto and neither ate the cheese, and they both had grilled lemon chicken with broccoli and no dessert. Gail had never before seen such an eagerly theatrical Italian waiter, full of "bella this" and "bella that," so eager to see a couple out the door. They had turned poor Toscano's into some sort of penitentiary chow hall.

Later, they failed to have sex.

After they had fallen asleep, Gail's visitors arrived, bathed in white light. They levitated her from the bed, somehow through the down comforter, and then down the stairs and out the door to the backyard, where they stood in the light together -- Gail and three aliens that she had been introduced to as Midge, Tidge, and Fidge.

"I had to lie to the FBI about you three," said Gail.

They tittered in unison. Midge, Tidge, and Fidge did everything in unison, and Gail believed they were one entity with three names. They looked like black columns with bald human heads in silhouette and seemed to lack appendages. Though it was a chilly night, and they had taken Gail outside in just a lavender silk negligee, she felt comfortable and not even a breeze, as if she were inside a sterile room, despite the grass under her bare feet. She could not see beyond a barrier of milky white light and presumed nobody from beyond the barrier could see within.

"They already know about us," they said. They did not sound like three voices speaking in synchronization. They sounded deep, breathy and female. They sounded like Cher. "Why do you think they're asking?"

"I thought they thought I was up to something fishy, you know, financially."

"They want to know why an alien intelligence is telling you about the coming demise of humanity, Gail."

"And I shouldn't tell them?"

"They won't understand."

"I don't understand," Gail said.

"Buy more gold. Short real estate credit in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The lenders are over-extended in the face of rising interest rates and wage stagnation."

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports rising wages in the U.S."

"They're mismeasuring.They've missed seasonal fluctuations from the hurricane season, and they're overestimating. Also, we believe that GE will be forced to reveal an additional $20 billion in liabilities caused by overestimations of asset values of salable equipment within its power generation unit. That tip is immediately actionable."

"Okay," said Gail. "I have a lot of questions."

"We know," said Midge, Tidge, and Fidge. "But that's the end of our session."

Gail found herself back in bed, waking up with a start, as if from a dream about falling. Clive remained on his side, with his back turned to her, as if he hadn't moved a bit since her taking and departure. She checked the time on her phone. It was after 2am. She went back to sleep. This had been happening since college, and it no longer kept her up nights.

On Monday, Gail used an options strategy to set up a short position in GE stock.  She made only a small allocation to it, as she generally traded currencies and commodities futures, and she worried that a larger bet would spook her investors or signal red flags to the risk management team at Simon August Capital, the investment firm where she worked as Head of Global Macro Strategy.

Gail had a team of seven men working for her. They were quants. They were short in stature and bearish in their outlook. Gail and her team believed deeply in the fragility of the global economy and of human existence. They mostly lost money, but investors stuck with them because they expected her to make enough money in the event of collapse that it would offset their other inevitable losses. They viewed the steady erosion of their account balances as insurance premiums. "You're my seatbelt," said one of her investors, who ran the pension fund for a dying industrial company in the Midwest. "I don't want to wear you all the time, but I'm smart enough to keep you on anyway."

By Wednesday, the tip from Midge, Tidge, and Fidge had been validated by an analyst note from JPMorgan that turned into a story on CNN and, finally, a statement from the company. Gail closed about half the position and made her fund enough money that she could lose everything on the rest of the trade and still clear a small profit. On Thursday, GE's stock rebounded as investors absorbed the news and decided it wasn't as bad as it had seemed sixteen hours prior. 

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a correction about wage growth just before the markets opened and after China's government had announced it would pour billions of dollars into its own economy to stave off any further slowdown in growth.  So on Friday, sentiment was bad. The markets fell, GE fell hardest among the larger stocks, but Gail's portfolio did well. She closed the GE trade and had booked significant profit. Gail might have even turned in a significantly profitable month if things kept up (down) for another week. She reported her performance monthly, so only monthly numbers mattered. What happened within those months held limited consequence. The aliens did not visit Gail again until April, after the last week of March had obliterated her gains.

"Why do you give me tips that make me lose money?" she demanded.

"We're only sharing our thoughts with you," said Midge, Tidge, and Fidge, during their meeting in her backyard.

"Meaning I'm the only one you're sharing this with, or that they're just thoughts?"

They shrugged, which was difficult to gesture without arms, but they got the point across. It was a short meeting. Midge, Tidge, and Fidge advised Gail to remain bearish and reiterated their promise to help her and her family should they be endangered or inconvenienced by the impending global economic collapse.

On the first Monday in April, the day that Gail had to report the "goose egg" to her clients, she received a call from Mellody.  She and Benjamin wanted to drop by the office with some follow-up questions. Gail absolutely refused to meet them at the office and agreed instead to drinks after work, at a bar in Gramercy, far from the Financial District.

Gail had chosen a basement cocktail bar, west of Third Avenue on 16th, with the only natural light from the sidewalk level windows where you could see nothing but pedestrian feet from inside. She arrived a few minutes behind Mellody who already had a drink that might have been a gin and tonic or might have been soda water with a lime. Benjamin was not there.

"He too young for bars?" quipped Gail.

"Believe it or not, he has homework," said Mellody. "Kid's in part time law school. Oh, to have his energy."

Gail ordered an old fashioned, a happy hour special. Mellody had used her oversized purse to hold them two seats at the end of the bar, so they could talk next to one another and wouldn't be interrupted often by the standing crowd reaching in for service.

"How did the month wind up?" asked Mellody.

"Flat," said Gail. "Was looking good there for awhile."

"Somebody gave you a great tip about GE."

"Why do you say that? I ended down."

"What do you take us for?" Mellody shook her head. "You need to help me help you."

"It's not your job to help me," said Gail. "You know that. I know that."

"We're not investigating you," Mellody assured.

"You're allowed to lie about that," said Gail. "Everybody knows that. You're allowed to lie to me and it's okay and if I lie to you, I can go to jail. This is not an even-steven situation at all."

Gail did not touch her drink. She did not drink often and would be tipsy halfway through. Besides, she figured, this FBI agent was no doubt drinking soda water gussied up to look like a cocktail as a way to bring Gail's guard down.

"This is all true," Mellody admitted. "Everything you're saying. So, let me just ask you for a favor."

"You can ask," Gail granted.

"It may sound a little odd," Mellody cautioned.

"You'll have a hard time shocking me," said Gail.

"I want you to sleep with your phone in your underwear. Every night. Tucked in front."

That's when Gail realized that Mellody knew, but that neither one of them were going to bring up the notion of alien hyper-intelligence in plain language in a basement cocktail bar in Gramercy.

"So I can call you when it happens?" said Gail. "I don't know how you expect me to dial my phone from there. I have my talents, but that's not one of them."

"Don't need you to make a call," said Gail. "Don't even need the phone to be on. I just need it with you."

"There are serious civil rights implications to that," said Gail.

"Like you said, it's not even-steven. They don't, you know, probe you or anything, right?"

"Of course not," said Gail. "We're...friends. It's not like that."

"We just want to hear what they say. The government has a vital interest here."

"I get it."

Gail did as instructed. The most difficult part was putting her phone in her underwear with Clive in bed next to her. She had to stay up a little later than him and then slip it in. Even so, on the third night, he rolled over, put his paw on her belly and slid it south in an almost juvenile attempt at frisk and wound up with a handful of iPhone.

"You have a serious addiction problem," he declared.

"I don't know how that got there," said Gail. It really disturbed her that Clyde accepted this explanation without even a follow-up question.

"I think it's unhealthy because of the radiation," he said.

"It's not even on," she said, realizing this did not improve her explanation.

"I don't know what's gotten into you lately," he said.

That night, Midge, Tidge, and Fidge did appear, and they effortlessly floated Gail out of her bedroom into the cone of light in the backyard. But when Gail arrived, she realized she did not have her phone. "Ahem, did you--" she began.

"Yes, we removed your phone," they said. "We’re allergic," they tittered. "What a strange place to keep your phone."

"The FBI wants to know what you're telling me," said Gail.

"So, tell them."

"They want to hear it from you."

"No. And those people who visited you aren't from the FBI. They're from a special branch of the United States government. They're not great people."

Gail's heart fluttered briefly. She should have known better. "They seem harmless."

"They're supposed to seem harmless."

"They want to know why you're talking down the economy."

"We're just making observations. It doesn't take an advanced alien hyper-intelligence to see what's going on. Your climate is changing around you, and your leaders joke on the Internet that there's no global warming because it's cold out. It's all wildly concerning."

"Maybe if you told me something more useful, like when it's all going to collapse?"

"We don't know."

"I see. With all of that technology…"

"Answer unclear, ask again later," said Midge, Tidge, and Fidge.

Gail had to face it. They really had no idea. She had staked her career on a series of tips from an intergalactic hyper-intelligence that was really just guessing. "What should I do about these government agents?" she asked.

"We could vaporize them," said Midge, Tidge, and Fidge.

"That seems extreme," said Gail.

"All you have to do is ask," they said. "You're our favorite human."

"Why?"

"You shouldn’t even have to ask."

Next thing she knew, she was in bed, covered in sweat. Her iPhone was on her nightstand. Clive slumbered, his back to her as usual. It was just after two in the morning, and she could not get back to sleep.

Gail crept out of bed, went into the living room, and called Mellody. To her surprise, Mellody answered and did not seem to have been asleep. Gail told Mellody that  the aliens would not explain themselves to her or to the agents, though she left out the part about Mellody not actually working for the FBI.

"They went into your panties and took the phone out," said Mellody.

"I don't think that’s how they did it," Gail responded.

"The signal wouldn't have penetrated the cone of light, I bet."

"Right, the dampening field. That's how they hide from us," Gail said. "Oh, and they don't know anything about the economy."

"Thanks for letting me know. Benjamin will pick you up from work tomorrow evening. I can’t be there. I want you to get in the car with him and go answer his questions. We appreciate your help, Gail. You’re a true patriot. Try to sleep."

"How will I know--"

"I'll text you the make and model of the car and the time tomorrow. Good night, Gail."

The next morning at work, the CEO called her into his office and laid into her about her fund's performance. He accused her of bringing the firm down around her and mentioned all of the innocent marketing and sales people who stood to lose their jobs because of her incompetence, and he threatened to fire half of her analytic team, which he called "The Seven Dwarves." He even threw his cell phone kind of at her though he intentionally missed by a wide enough margin for deniability.

Gail endured this rant without betraying much emotion -- telling herself that while she couldn't be perceived as so arrogant that she didn't care, she also could not allow herself to be perceived as so vulnerable that it would just invite further attack. Seth, the CEO and a former bankruptcy attorney, treated people as prey when he grew angry. She could not show him her belly. 

"Is that all?" she said.

"Yes. That's all," he said. "You may go."

So she left, and she didn't tell the Seven Dwarves that their jobs were on the line.  Instead, they worked on buying what she thought were depression-priced call options on gold, which would be worth a lot of money in the event of catastrophe.  A little before lunch, her son Derek called from school, complaining tearfully about loneliness and missing home.

"There's not a school for you here," she said, her heart breaking.

"It's fine, I don't need to go to school," he said.

"Then what will you do with the rest of your life?"

"I'll spend it with you, Mom."

Seth couldn't pull tears from her, but Derek could. She felt deep guilt and shame. Around then, Mellody texted that Benjamin would pick her up at 5:45pm, on the corner of Lexington and 53rd street, in a red Toyota hybrid. She remembered that Benjamin had only recently learned to drive, which made her laugh, which helped with the repressed tears.

Gail reserved a meeting room and used it to call Clive, to tell him about Derek’s call. "I feel so horrible," she said.

"It's what's best for him," he assured her. "You know what? I'll drive up and see him. You have to work. I don't have any place to be."

"I don't want to ask you to do that," she said, though she did in fact want him to do that.

"I want to go," he said. "I'll go up, I'll see him at dinner. Maybe I'll take him off campus. I'll spend the night in a roadside motel, see him once more tomorrow. Maybe talk to his counselor, makes sure he's okay."

"What if he’s not okay?"

"Then we'll deal with that," said Clive.

Good old Clive, he had really come through. They chatted a little while longer, but he wanted to get on the road. They hung up, and he promised to call when he arrived at the motel, which he had booked online while they were talking. His eagerness to be useful made Gail think that maybe her husband should go back to work, but if he'd done that, then nobody would have been around to deal with this crisis. She wondered how other people coped. They probably didn't send their troubled sons to boarding school, so their problems were closer to home. Gail felt guilty again.

At the appointed time, Gail left the office, switched to her urban walking flats, and managed to stow her iPad into her Fendi. She met Benjamin in his Toyota hybrid. He motioned for her to get into the car. She did. He drove west on 53rd, then uptown to 55th, then west again.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Place to talk," Benjamin snipped.

In silence, he drove. Traffic had snarled, so it took awhile. "You probably want to concentrate on driving, since it's such a new thing for you," said Gail.

"Yeah," said Benjamin, no smile.

Benjamin had to turn downtown for a few blocks on Tenth Avenue. Then he went west again, turned uptown on the West Side Highway, and finally stopped on the far right hand side of the road, in a spot reserved for resting buses, outside of the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in New York, which is directly across from where tourists can catch the Circle Line for a tour of the Hudson River to the Statue of Liberty. On the side of the consulate, they had nailed a metal sign that read, "NO LOITERING OR CELLULAR PHONE USE," and then presumably the same thing in Chinese.

"This is where we talk," said Benjamin.

"Outside the Chinese consulate?"

"Yes," he said, "because I think it's funny."

"Whatever floats you, Benjamin."

"Mellody says you failed," he said. "I think you don't want to help. I think you're working with them. So, Mellody's nice. I'm not so nice because I care about life on this ball of mud that we call Earth."

"I care, too."

"Here's the deal. You either bring us a recording of your friends, or you broker a meeting between us and your friends, or we ruin you. That little trade of yours on GE couldn't have been legal."

"It was legal," said Gail.

"Not if we prove it wasn't," said Benjamin. "And that's just the start of it. We ruin you for trading on insider tips. We nail your husband for being in on it. You spend a few years in jail, and because your husband knew or should have known, we go after all your accounts and leave you both without a dime. You'll probably be in hock to your lawyers, because you'll both need those, but it won't matter because the whole deal will be rigged."

"You're telling me your evil plan?"

"I'm telling you what will happen if you don't cooperate. If these friends of yours from up there care, they'll talk to legitimate representatives of the United States government."

"I'll ask them," said Gail.

"Make it happen," said Benjamin. "You think your kid is in any shape to go through life penniless with two parents who won't be suitable to ever earn a dime again outside of a Denny's?"

"Since when did you become such a nasty person?"

"Since it fell to me to protect life on Earth," he said.

"Fine," said Gail. "Take me to Grand Central."

“Walk,” he said.  “I want you to think on this.”

Gail walked to Grand Central, and she did think about the offer. On the way, she called Mellody, who did not answer.  Mellody returned the call from the Metro North train home, but said that only that Benjamin was quite serious, that she was sorry it had come to this, but that they wished her no real ill in the event of her cooperation.

"I can't make them cooperate," she said.

"Then we have to show them that there are consequences for your refusal, and this is the only way we have of doing it," said Mellody.

Gail withheld, as she did from Benjamin, that her friends had offered to vaporize both of the government agents. Instead, she said, "You know, they're really harmless."

"We do not know that," said Mellody. "We do not know that at all."

When she got home, Gail spoke to Clive, who had arrived and taken Derek to a steakhouse. He reported their son was in good spirits, though very happy to see him and very much wanting to return home." She thought about Benjamin's threat to ruin the innocent boy and how a child was just collateral damage to the lives of their parents.

That night, Midge, Tidge, and Fidge visited Gail in her bedroom, explaining that they didn't need to hide her away in the backyard given that the house was empty.  They were in a tizzy about the mounting global debt crisis and eager to tell Gail that China's debt, at forty trillion, dwarfed the combined debt of the rest of the emerging markets while, at the same time, the emerging markets would soon account for more of global GDP growth than the U.S. and Europe combined.

"I need you to talk to Benjamin and Mellody," said Gail.

"We can't do it," they replied. "Your government is so dysfunctional that it can't even keep itself from nearly defaulting over its debt limits every three years. It's just not ready to know the truth about galactic society."

"And I am?"

"You're harmless, and we like you," said Midge, Tidge, and Fidge.

"They're threatening to ruin my life," said Gail. "They're threatening my son. They obviously know about you."

"We're sorry, Gail. Your government suspects, yes, but they don't know. They cannot know.  We can't confirm this for them. We've found a few people we like on your planet, but your governments are universally horrible and don't get us started on your corporations."

"So what do I do, guys?"

"We'll take care of them for you."

"That's like me taking care of them. Like you're the gun and I'm the trigger."

"They aren't nice people, Gail."

"I don't want to be alone tonight. Can you take me to see my son and husband?"

Midge, Tidge, and Fidge opened a portal in the air, like a window framed by light, and she saw Clive's motel room, very simple, as if from a bygone era, and she saw that Clive had let their boy sleep over and that the son had tangled himself in his father’s arms and that the two rested together peacefully. A tear fell down her cheek. The portal closed.

"They need to come home," said Gail. "And we need to be left alone."

"We'll take care of things," said Midge, Tidge, and Fidge. "Goodbye, Gail."

Derek moved home. It was not perfect, but they were three, together, and it was better.  Gail never heard from Mellody or Benjamin again. Her attempts to call Mellody failed.  "This number cannot be reached at this time," is what her phone told her. Midge, Tidge, and Fidge ceased their visitations, but Gail couldn't bring herself to not heed their warnings. Everything would collapse some day, she knew. Just look at how we're running the place, she thought. But she also hoped against that as best she could.

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