All that the blob had passed through crumbled to dust. Immediately. As though the Earth was destined to fall apart in this very manner. The alien’s plan went off without a hitch.

But the alien wasn’t stupid. Quite the opposite, in fact. He had accounted for a lot of data, trial and error with many planets teeming with life… so much waste. But this time was perfect. No strange gravitational pulls, no momentum-powered orbital breakdowns, nothing. The Earth kept spinning.

People trembled, gasped, and called conferences in the conference rooms that were left. Maybe a third of the Earth was sliced, a fifth of the population gone. But somehow they were still here.

Plans were made, graphs were created, satellite images taken, models theorized about. Transportation was a mess, the entire United States East Coast was decimated. So was half of Japan, loops throughout Eurasia, and damn near all of Australia.

And for all the remaining brainpower, they devised only one plan:

Revenge.