A Precise And Vouched-For Cycle

20261025

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

James folded his arms and surveyed the rows of faceless ‘purge bots’. “So, let me get this straight…”
He turned back to face Samuel, who’d finally given up straining against the zip-ties holding each of his limbs to the high-backed office chair.
“Your fish translator was a success. But you didn’t contact anyone about it. Because the fish told you that aliens were going to try and purge humanity?”
“No, no,” Samuel huffed, his anger now tempered with exasperation, “they said ‘wrath will descend from the sky and test humanity’.”
“Mhm. And you decided the best course of action was wiping humanity out ahead of time?”
“What???” Samuel spluttered, recoiling. “No! What kind of maniac do you think I am??”
“The kind who neglects to tell the rest of the organisation that you are plotting against us with fish.”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me!”
“Well, you got that much right.” James sighed and walked over to inspect the pinboard above the desk. “Alright. Talk me through this again.”
“So, the last time this happened, it caused the fall of Atlantis.”
“Ah. One mystery solved.”
“Exactly!” Samuel beamed.
James swallowed another sigh and decided not to derail the conversation with a diatribe about identifying sarcasm. Instead he prompted “What happened to Atlantis?”
“These ‘wrath’ beings came down from the sky, identified the strongest human nation of the time, and carried out some manner of incredibly focused struggle with them. Obviously the Atlantans lost.”
“Obviously.”
“But! The crucial point is that Atlantis was not the first!”
“You mean wrath beings make a habit of falling out of the sky and obliterating nations?”
“Yes. Not a frequent habit, at least not by human standards, but I’ve pieced together a number of archaeological records and we’ve pinned down a fairly precise cycle.”
“By ‘we’, do you mean you… and the fish?”
“Right. The data’s been peer reviewed by nearly two dozen individuals!”
James looked over at the porthole, which was being circled by a whole school of varied reef fish. As if they were desperate to get inside.
He looked back at the pinboard. “So, how long do we have? Precisely?”
“Less than a decade.”
“That doesn’t sound terribly precise.”
“It is given the timescales involved!”
“Touché. Now, about this army of autonomous kill-bots armed with stolen warheads…”
“We need the strongest human nation to be at peak performance! And no leader’s going to listen to the advice of fish.”
“They are dreadfully underrepresented in political lobbying, yes.”
Ah, that one got Samuel to scowl. But he doggedly continued “So the only way forward is to give them an enemy to rally against.”
“Mm.” James massaged between his eyebrows. “Samuel. Did it occur to you that a previously unknown, incredibly technologically advanced military force obliterating the third most powerful nation on the planet would cause utter chaos worldwide?”
“Sacrifices must-”
James slammed his fist down on the desk and glowered. “How are we going to defend against these ‘wrath beings’ if our population has been devastated by nuclear strikes and supply lines collapsing?? Do you have any idea how reliant our technological edge is on foreign trade? If you think we can take on these aliens with only what we can produce domestically we have nothing to fear from them at all!”
“Um.” Samuel blinked and licked his lips. “B-but I was only going to-”
“Only going to trigger the world’s second largest trading bloc into scouring the entire planet for our organisation, which would, if successful, lead to our nation facing war with the rest of the globe! I doubt we’d have wrapped that up in less than a decade, much less gotten all our key resources built back up!”
Silence. Samuel chewed his lip and looked uneasy.
“God, you were always such an idiot.” James shook his head. “I sometimes wish you weren’t such a brilliant idiot. You’d be far less dangerous. Fine. I will ‘recover’ the warheads you were going to use for your crackpot potentially humanity-ending stunt. You are going to be ‘apprehended’. And this project will be carried out with proper oversight.”
He jabbed a finger. “And so help me, if I find you colluding with another species against humanity again…”
“Alright! Alright.” Samuel slumped. “I… should’ve run the idea past someone who understands what a government is. My bad.”
“Yes, your bad.” James scoffed, folding his arms. “Honestly! Let’s just be glad your mistake was caught in time. Because ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ is not a game you want to play with an entire global population! Your aliens might have shown up and found themselves waging ritualistic war with microbes. Assuming single-cellular life survived. Eesh. Fine. Let me call the office and we’ll get this sorted out.”

Prompt was "A mistake can make you stronger, through trying again as they say, though I don’t feel that quite applies to the end of humanity."