Katherine Richards was a wonderful woman. Many good things could be said about her. She was generous, friendly, intelligent, and gracious. She lived a modest lifestyle and sent most of her earnings toward charity. She was a truly loyal, selfless, and honorable woman.
I hated her.
Katherine Richards was too damn perfect. No human could possess such traits without something truly despicable below the surface.
It was impossible! Humans had proved time and time again that they were hopelessly incompetent, cruel, and greedy. The greater the benefit they seemed to impart to the world, the greater their failings and faults.
Yet because of Katherine Richards, I couldn’t move forward. Despite the overwhelming presence of irrefutable evidence, the council had denied my request to designate humans as expendable based on one Katherine Richards of Oklahoma. How could those buffoons let a single uncultured, unintelligent, unjust species stand in the way of galactic improvement?
After the rejection, I was still confident. If there’s anything you can trust a human to do, it’s fail. So I watched Katherine Richards, waiting for any sign of a mistake, of the darkness hiding beneath her convincing exterior. But she had remained incredibly, infuriatingly perfect.
It was time to take matters into my own hands. Place a little pressure on her. Start an argument with the neighbors, perhaps. It had to be subtle, of course; the council wouldn’t take lightly to meddling in the affairs of an isolated species.
Yet I needed to get this project finished. It would be a technological revolution! The humans wouldn’t feel a thing. One second, and they’d be dust, and then I’d make history.
It was settled then. I could no longer hope for nature to run its course. I would have to face her directly. Katherine Richards would never see it coming…
