SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY

"Even though it's only Christmas Eve, we'll call this our Christmas dinner," Zero said as he opened the lids of the pizza boxes on his dining room table. "Because who knows where we'll be tomorrow? No turkey for our sim Christmas, I'm afraid. Just two large pies - a plain and a sausage." He glanced at his two guests. "Do either of you know what Christmas means, by the way?"

Kek didn't even look up; he'd been lured away from one of the computers where he'd been engrossed inMortal Kombat XX , and now he grabbed a slice of the sausage pie and started wolfing it down.

But Tome smiled and said, "Lights and trees and presents."

"Yes, that's a big part of it. A time of peace on earth and good will toward men, I'm told. But what about sims? Does that include good will toward sims?"

Zero had made the mistake of allowing himself a glass of holiday cheer: one Scotch and water. Terrible tasting stuff, didn't know how Ellis Sinclair had drunk so much of it all those years, but he'd forced it down - the season to be jolly and all that. Now he wished he hadn't. Not used to alcohol, and though he wasn't feeling much in the way of physical effects, it seemed to have untethered his thoughts, leaving them to wander. Now they were wandering into terra incognita.

"Tome not know, Mist Zero."

Not know what? Oh, yes...about good will toward sims.

"Of course you don't, Tome. Christmas has become a secular holiday for the most part, but it's still a religious occasion for those who celebrate the arrival of their god to save mankind. But what of us sims? Are we included in that salvation? Or are we damned?" He toasted with a piece of plain pie. "Joy to the world."

But he felt no trace of joy, felt instead as if he were standing on the brink of a precipice, gazing into the unknown. The world as he'd always known it was about to change. Radically. And with it his relationship to that world and all the people he knew in it. Nothing would ever be the same.

He tried to imagine what it would be like to come out of hiding, to wander about with his face exposed to the world, to be aperson . He could not.

He surprised himself by starting to sing: "We three sims of chimpanzee blood, wondering how we'll ride out the flood..." He noticed Tome and Kek staring at him. "Come on, sing! You know the words!"

But then he couldn't go on, not with his throat constricting around a sob.

What have I done? My race, my brother sims - what will happen to them when Meerm's baby is shoved in the face of the world? By saving them will I doom them to extinction?