Nisha woke up. She heard Bok walking around outside the tent.

“Rachel, wake up. Bok’s outside,” she whispered.

She opened the door. Bok walked around on the slightly frosty gravel.

“Don’t your feet get cold?”

“No, they’re fine. We rarely wear shoes like humans do. The only exception is under extreme conditions like during warfare, which hasn’t happened in a long time.”

“I hope you always remain bare footed. Tell us what’s happening,” Rachel said. “I noticed the shuttle spheres are behaving differently. The ones traveling between the orbiting spheres and the big colony. For the past few months, several thousand sphere arrivals and departures happened per day. A few days ago, activity was almost non-existent. Now they’re arriving and departing at a high rate again.”

“Bok, are more Omanji arriving at the colony than leaving?” Nisha said.

“No, they appear to be departing the colony on balance.”

“What? Do you mean they’re leaving and going back up to the spheres in orbit?” Nisha said.

“This appears to be the case,” Bok said.

“Are they moving out the troublemakers?” Rachel said.

“That’s possible,” Bok said. “I’m still unable to connect to anyone or anything within the big colony. You know as much as I do. If they’re moving out the troublemakers, I hope that doesn’t include me. I wouldn’t mind Gol being removed however.”

“Did you build any surveillance drones?” Rachel said. “Then we can better keep track of what’s happening.”

Bok paused.

“We’re programming drones now. They’ll be ready shortly and it’ll take them about 10 minutes to fly to the big colony.”

“Great.” Rachel said.

“I’m contacting the president,” Nisha said. “Has Zon contacted you?”

“No, there’s been no contact at all. There’s been no contact with anyone in Gol’s colony either.”

Nisha connected to the President.

“Emma, has anyone noticed any changes in the behavior of the Omanji in the past few hours?”

“Things are unusually quiet. I’ve heard nothing at all today. Let me scan our surveillance news. No, there’s nothing at all.”

“Well, we’ve been watching, and I detect a net population outflow from the big colony,” Nisha said.

“Are they removing the younglings?” Emma said.

“We’re not sure. I wanted to find out if you knew anything. Even Bok knows nothing.”

“The only thing unusual in the news today is the stock market is up big today. There’s no economic news which accounts for an 8% rally. I’m not arguing though.”

“Me too,” Nisha said. “No news is good news. Most retirement accounts follow the averages. They’re down 70% since before they came. I think I’ll get back into the market. I’ll admit I was short.”

“My retirement account needs the 8%,” Emma said. “Thanks for the update, Nisha. Keep me informed.”

They disconnected.

“I never considered that the President worries about her retirement account just as we do,” Nisha said.

“Yeah, in addition to all the other worries she has,” Rachel said. “While you were talking, the exodus intensified. Bok’s drone is monitoring the main colony and I’m watching the video feed.”

Nisha connected.

“Streams of them are walking into the shuttle spheres. They’re carrying belongings, and children, and everything. It’s the reverse of when they arrived.”

“Yeah, at least some of them are moving out. Maybe Zon is kicking out the troublemakers.”

“That might be. Or they’re all leaving the earth for good,” Nisha said.

“Be careful what you ask for. Well, we’ll find out what happens. As we know, they don’t mess around.”

For the rest of the day, they watched Bok’s drone feed and continued human evacuations of the Mojave Desert. Nisha alerted everyone on Twitter to pay close attention to the spheres in orbit to discover if they’re leaving and heading elsewhere. If they’re leaving, where are they going?