The baristas exited their stolen spaceship, to find that the night remained calm, with the half-moon that sailed serenely overhead alone but for the stars.

Max scanned the sky for any telltale trails of fire. "Maybe they didn't notice the distress signal."

"Oh, they'll have noticed," replied Ethlukjamson. "I've deactivated the distress beacon and sent out an 'everything's cool, false alarm' message, but it won't do any good. The Narguwullians may be box-of-hammers dumb but the Rigellians certainly aren't. They were probably already suspicious about our joyriding and the distress call will be the clincher. We're going to have company and we're going to have it soon.

"So, gather round baristas. It's decision time. It's not within my mission protocols to force you into being weaponised—Flixl didn't want that. An unwilling hero is no hero at all. But the time has come to choose. What's it gonna be? Who wants to buy a ticket for the train to awesome? Who wants to be all they can be—times about a million?"

"But we still don't even know what that means!" exclaimed Max. "You keep going on about weaponising us, but not about what that involves. What will happen to us, how will we change, can it be reversed, will any bits fall off, etcetera, etcetera? Kinda stuff we need to know."

"Plus, you said something about the the final version of the weaponisation system not even being tested yet," said Cora. "Is it safe?"

"Oh, yeah," said Ethlukjamson. "Totally safe. Just because some of the early trials didn't go so well, it doesn't mean the final version will make anyone explode."

"Explode?" shouted the four baristas, in unison.

"Calm down, people. I said it won't make you explode. Try to keep up. Now, who's ready?"

Mel spoke through gritted teeth. "If it's not going to make us explode, you horrid little hologram, why did you mention exploding at all?"

"Did I mention exploding? How silly of me, forget I said it. Now, if you'll all gather round the capsule—"

Max folded his arms. "We're not gathering around anything until you tell us what went wrong with the earlier versions."

The hologram sighed. "OK, OK, so one of the first human specimens tested might have kind of suffered from rapid disassembly. A bit."

"Rapid disassembly?" queried Cam. "Just how rapid are we talking? Do you mean exploded?"

"Well, if you're going to be pedantic about it, then I s'pose you could call it exploding. But that was only an early trial. The next few hardly exploded at all and the last couple not even a little bit. They only kind of went a bit nuts. And then their brains melted."

"Their brains melted?" breathed Cora, her eyes wide. "And what happened then?"

"Well, they fell down. You know, no motor-function to speak of. Or any function, really." Ethlukjamson seemed to realise he was losing his audience. "But look, these were trials, people—that's what trials are for. You know, to iron out the bugs and squash the kinks. The final version ran flawlessly in the simulations, Flixl just didn't get time to do a real world test." He smiled winningly at them. "Until now."

Max shook his head wearily. "Well, since you put it like that, how can we possibly refuse?"

Ethlukjamson's eyes widened in surprise. "Really? 'Cause it kind of felt like the old sales pitch was letting me down. I actually thought you guys might be going to say no."

"Of course we're going to say no, you artificial moron!" shouted Mel. "Max was being sarcastic—you know sarcasm? Maybe look it up while you're downloading dictionary.com."

"Oh right," said Ethlukjamson, slowly. "Sarcasm. Yeah, I did look that one up and it's a toughie—it's giving my algorithms almost as much trouble as irony."

Cam's expression brightened. "Don't worry. Irony gives a lot of people a hard time. The best way to understand it is probably to consider some examples. For instance—"

"Uh, Cam," interjected Max, who had suffered through enough of Cam's previous linguistic dissertations to know what was coming, "now's perhaps not the best time." He glanced up at the thankfully still empty sky before turning back to the virtual man. "So what happens if we do say no?"

"Well, I guess I'll take my capsule and go looking for somebody else. As messed up as the plan has become, I'm programmed to see it through. I've reported the capsule destroyed, which may keep the bad guys off my tail for a while but probably not for long enough to reach any kind of population centre. I suspect they'll be all over me like a skin inflammation before I've gone fifty clunks."

"So you're more or less saying it's us or nobody."

"More."

"Huh?"

"I'm saying it more, not less. In fact I'm saying it the mostest. It is you guys or nobody. Like I said, I'll give finding somebody else a try, but as one of your famous philosophers once said, 'Trying is the first step towards failure'."

"Actually," said Cam, "I'm pretty sure Homer Simpson said that."

Ethlukjamson frowned. "Oh yeah. I was mixing him up with the other Homer—the Greek guy. But anyway, them's the facts, people." He looked up at the sky. "And we're kind of on the clock here."

Taking a deep breath, Cora stepped forward. "I'll do it."

"What?" cried the other three.

She turned to face them. "I know it might seem crazy, but what about this night hasn't been crazy? If the hologram represents Earth's last hope and saying no to him means that hope will be lost, how can I say no? I can't get those people in Sydney out of my mind and there's more like them, all around the world. If I can possibly help them, then I'm going to do it. Besides, I think I'd rather explode than spend the rest of my life working in a hat-mine."

Max gave her a hug. "Babe, you are one brave lady. Bonkers, but brave." He stepped back. "But how can we know that we're the last chance? OK, Sydney looked bad, but it's just one city. Maybe other countries are fighting back, maybe they can stop the Rigellians. What about the Americans, the Chinese, or the Russians? Their militaries have way better stuff than ours—stealth fighters and Navy seals, all that kind of crap. Even nukes. Maybe we're not as screwed as Ethel...Ethjam...sod it—EJ—says."

"EJ?" said Ethlukjamson. "EJ, EJ. You know what? I like it. EJ it is. And along with the new name, time for a new outfit. Particularly now that I've downloaded this season's Armani range." The board shorts, T-shirt, tie and business shoes instantly disappeared, to be replaced by a white collared shirt, tailored jacket, matching pants and suede loafers. Looking down, EJ adjusted the lapels of his jacket. "OK people, admit it. I look steamin'."

Mel snorted. "Hah! Firstly, the word you're after is smokin'. Secondly, in our current situation nobody here really gives a stoat's pancreas how you look. Thirdly, your new outfit may be an improvement, but frankly a garbage bag and some duct tape would be better than the business-construction-surfer dude look you were sporting. And fourthly, you forgot about the hat."

"What hat?"

"Your ridiculous yellow hard-hat, of course."

"I did? Not to worry, we'll soon fix that." He frowned in concentration and then smiled. "There, how's that?"

"Yellow and hard," said Cam. "It's still there."

"Impossible!" EJ scowled in ferocious concentration. "How about now?"

"Still there."

"No way! Must be a glitch in my code, just give me a sec—"

"EJ!" shouted Max. "Stop stressing about your bloody hat! Focus! We were talking about how other countries might be doing better than Australia at putting up a fight. What do you know about that?"

"Fine, fine," replied EJ, testily. "Well, as for how the Americans are faring, observe."

Floating in the air behind him, as if being projected by an invisible projector onto an invisible screen, there appeared an image. An image of a devastated, burning building. A building that despite being basically a ruin, still had a distinctly recognisable shape.

"The Pentagon," said EJ. "That's a live feed I've hacked into from a Rigellian scout drone. Now, for the Chinese."

Another image appeared alongside the first, this time displaying an enormous paved city square, littered with the smoking carcasses of destroyed tanks and burnt out military vehicles. As they watched, a jet aircraft spiraled out of the sky and crashed into a building on the edge of the square, engulfing it in flame.

"That's Tiananmen Square. And finally, the Russians."

In the third image to appear, a stout woman wearing a headscarf chased a mustachioed man around a kitchen, periodically whacking her harried victim over the head, with what appeared to be a very large fish.

"Well," said Cam, after a few seconds of perplexed silence, "if she's on our side, maybe we do stand a chance."

Pushing back his hard-hat, EJ scratched his head. "Hmm. I seem to have hacked into Russian TV, instead of their military." The three images vanished. "Anyway, I think we can all agree it's pretty clear that nobody is going to come riding to the the rescue. Which is why—"

He was interrupted by a deep, growling rumble, pitched so low as to be almost more felt than heard.

"What the hell," demanded Mel, looking all around, "is that?"

It was impossible to pinpoint the source of the rumble, as it seemed to come from all directions at once.

"Well, judging by the frequency and amplitude of the vibrations," said EJ, "if we're lucky, it's the start of a massive, life-threatening and enormously destructive earthquake."

There was a pause. Finally Cam voiced the question they were all thinking. "And if we're unlucky?"

EJ looked grim. "It's a Rigellian battletank, coming to blow us all to hell."