No One Here Gets Out Alive

On planet Xenon, where I’m from, everybody lives forever. Unless somebody kills them. I never killed anyone that didn’t need it.

Here on Earth, everybody knows me as Zach. Zach Wheaton. Unbeknownst to the indigenous population, I was sent to Earth from the planet Xenon. I was convicted of several serial killings on Xenon and sentenced to death. The death penalty was abolished on Xenon a few thousand years after Earth was discovered. Here was a planet where all living things, including Xenonians, eventually died naturally. What better place for Xenonians to send their soiled laundry? Let Earth do the dirty work while the good folks of Xenon kept their hands blood-free and squeaky clean.

I was deported here a few years ago at age thirty (in Earth years) and almost immediately found employment as a video game developer. Earth was still in the dark age regarding computer science, so I found the work rather trivial. Everybody thought I was a genius, including me. I was written up in PC Gamer magazine so many times that they eventually gave me my regular column called Algorithm Alley with Zach. Subscriptions when through the ceiling. Developers couldn’t wait to get their hands on my column every month to see the latest insurmountable problem I would solve with a few lines of brilliant code. I was worshipped, and I loved it.

Of course, the urge to kill was always lurking in the shadows. I loved the life I had built and suppressed the urge as long as I could. I learned about another Xenonian who was deported to Earth under circumstances similar to mine. I tried to connect with him but found out he had not been able to control his urges. The Earthlings had put him to death years earlier. His name was Ted Bundy.

After my unfortunate discovery that Mr. Bundy was no longer with us, I did research on similar supposedly deranged Xenonians. John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Rader, Gary Ridgeway, and David Berkowitz all had one thing in common – they were all originally from Xenon. How did I know? I still had many contacts among the Police intelligentsia on Xenon. They kept me informed.

Over the years, I have gotten married (Julie) and fathered a son (Jules). Julie and I met at a gamer's convention in Las Vegas and immediately hit it off. She was covered in ink and piercings and was quite proud to attend gamer's functions with the author of Algorithm Alley. Strangely, I never had any evil intentions toward Julie. I’ve found this is not uncommon for killers of my ilk.

My conscience began to bother me. I know what you’re thinking. Psychopaths don’t have a conscience. Well, I’m the exception that proves the rule. It just seemed wrong to me that killers were being sent to Earth with no warning to the indigenous population. Most of the lethal transplants were more than willing to take the opportunity to ply their trade as many times as possible before they died, either naturally or otherwise. For me, this hardly seemed sporting.

So, I applied to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, commonly called the BAU. Julie was flabbergasted. How could the author of Algorithm Alley apply for a job at the FBI, which was, in the circles that had made my career, largely considered the Evil Empire? I told Julie I had inside information on serial killers and that information had to be shared with the FBI. Julie wasn't buying it. She took Jules and moved back in with her parents.

I told the FBI interviewers I had inside information on the identity of a serial killer active right now. He was leaving a trail of bodies across South Dakota as we spoke.

At first, they didn’t believe me, but then they checked. Sure enough, there were three unidentified corpses discovered in the snow of South Dakota during the past eight days. There wasn’t enough evidence to prove the homicides were related, so the crimes hadn't been kicked up to the BAU yet. I assured them they were related and the killer's name was Michael Gaumond. As I expected, they couldn't find any record of a Michael Gaumond anywhere in South Dakota (he had only arrived on Earth eight days ago and was still living off the grid), and they wound up arresting me on a charge of wasting police resources.

I explained that I was from another planet and had inside information about Michael Gaumond and his whereabouts. They thought I was bat-shit crazy. One of the reasons was that if the star Xenon orbited was where I said it was, it would take seven hundred years to get there. I tried to explain that their scientists hadn't yet discovered the principles of warp drive. At maximum warp, Xenonian ships could make the trip in two days.

Eventually, I found myself a patient at Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally insane. It took two years for Gaumond to murder three more people and for the crimes to be connected to the original three homicides.

Under interrogation, Gaumond admitted he was from Xenon, and, yes, he had heard of me - Zach Wheaton – and, yes, I had been deported to Earth a few years earlier.

Gaumond was eventually found guilty and given a lethal injection (ever wonder if they sterilized the needles before carrying out that sentence?) But, based on his testimony before he died, the FBI, especially the BAU, began to look at me differently. Besides being possibly a bonafide alien, I had become an "asset."

I was given my own office on the top floor of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building in Washington, D.C. I did not have any "assignments" per se. My job was to keep my contacts on Xenon law enforcement open and sound the alert when one of my evil brethren was on his way to Earth.

I had lots of free time and used it to repair my relationship with Julie and my son, Jules.

The urge to kill was always lying just beneath the surface, struggling to come out. Julie and Jules helped me keep my head on straight. I wondered if a disproportionate number of Xenonians had the urge back home.

Was it nature’s way of keeping the population down?