Jethro had a choice. He had chosen wrong.

After the hostess (what was her name?) had sacrificed herself to throw Sky (had there even been a trace of Sky left?) out, there had been ten minutes, ten long, excruciating minutes of silence. No words needed to be spoken. The horror and mute sadness, the disappointment clouding in the cabin, originating with the Doctor (what was his real name?), the guilt of every other person, had been enough. No delusions had lasted. For those ten minutes, every person (the Doctor didn't seem to fit into this category) had blamed themselves. In that small bus that none of them would ever forget, not in their best dreams, certainly not in their worst nightmares, it seemed impossible to blame anyone but yourself.

They had been rescued three minutes after the silence was broken temporarily. The ride back to the leisure palace had been just as quiet.

It was once he and his parents were on their way home that the talk had begun.

His mother had convinced herself on that ride home that she had been blameless. She had wanted to throw Sky out. That was what could have, would have solved everything. Murder, the final solution. No compromise was needed, no appealing to whatever newly discovered species it was in Sky, just stone-cold murder among the icy, deadly diamonds. His father had agreed. They had blocked out everything they had done, believed they were blameless.

Jethro did not speak. He thought, all the long way back.

He knew what had happened. He did not have any delusions.

It was his fault. It was his parents fault. It was that professor and his assistant's fault. It was the hostess' fault. Hell, it was the Doctor's fault for being the suspicious person he was.

He would like to say that most of all, it was the fault of the thing stealing Sky's body, but it wasn't. Most of all, it was their fault for being too damn human.

He contemplated killing himself. He had tried to sentence two people to death, and two people had died for it. Humanity could do better without someone like him. Humanity, the problem that had caused the deaths.

Humanity could do better.

It could do better one person at a time.

If he passed an ideal for a better humanity on to just one other person, and they passed it on, one day, eventually, all of humanity, spread across the galaxies, would strive for that ideal, would believe in that dream and make it their own.

And then maybe one day, if a group of average humans, the lowest common denominator, gathered together in a bus to see sapphire falls on a deadly, beautiful planet, and drove off course to avoid a diamond fall, and the entertainment system failed and they talked and laughed with one another before the bus just stopped and one of them was taken over by a sinister new species, then maybe, just maybe…

They would listen to the mysterious Doctor Jethro was sure would be there. They would think, they would reason, they would work together and find a way to bargain with the thing possessing the most terrified one among them, the easiest target. They would be saved, everyone would be saved.

Everybody would live.