Read The Genocides for Free Online Page A

15,000 to 24,000 of the small mammals, within established limits of probable error.
    All wood-burrowing insects were eradicated.
    Operations have been begun to trace the escaped mammals and other mammals living beyond the limits of “Duluth-Superior,” but equipment is limited. (Consult Requisition Form 800-B: 15 August 1979; 15 May 1979; 15 February 1979.)
    Following incineration, ash was leveled into the concavities of the artifact, and seeding operations were begun 27 August 1979.
    Based on the results of samples taken from 12 May 1979 to 4 July 1979, this unit then removed to follow a route along the southern shore of “Lake Superior.” (Consult map of “Wisconsin State.”) Sampling had indicated that this area was most densely populated with indigenous mammals.
    The obsolete Spheroid Model 37-Mg will be employed for this operation, due to the shortages of Models 39-Mg and 45-Mh. Despite their bulkiness, these models are adequate for the extermination of such mammalian life as they are likely to encounter. Indeed, their thermotropic mechanisms are more highly developed than those of the later models. However, in exceptional circumstances the operation of Model 37-Mg cannot, without undue delay, be assumed by the Central Intelligence Bank of this Unit.
    The further process of incineration is expected to proceed less rapidly now that this, the last of the chief artifacts, has been leveled and sown. The remaining artifacts are small and widely spaced. Though our sample has shown that most of these are no longer inhabited, we will, pursuant to instructions of 4 July 1979, effect their entire incineration.
    Estimated completion of project: 2 February 1980.
----

    “What do you make of it, my dear?” he asked.
    “It’s very beautiful,” she said. “And did you do it just for me?”
    “Sweetheart, as far as I’m concerned, you’re the only girl in the world.”
    Jackie smiled, her bittersweet smile, the one she reserved for hopeless disasters. She closed her eyes, not to shut out the scene, but because they were very tired, and shook the ash from her short, curling black hair.
    Jeremiah Orville closed her in his arms. It wasn’t chilly, but it seemed the right thing to do just then—a traditional gesture, like taking off one’s hat at a funeral. Calmly, he watched the city burn.
    Jackie was rubbing her bobbed nose in the scratchy wool of his sweater. “I never really liked that city anyhow,” she said.
    “It kept us alive.”
    “Of course, Jerry. I didn’t mean to be ungrateful. I just meant—”
    “I understand. That’s just my well known sentimentality getting out of hand again.”
    Despite the heat and his enclosing arms, she shivered. “We’ll die now. We’ll die for sure.”
    “Chin up, Miss Whythe! Tally-ho! Remember the Titanic!”
    She laughed. “I feel like Carmen, in the opera, when she turns up the Queen of Spades.” She hummed the Fate theme, and when the last note proved too low, she mumbled: “In an amateur production.”
    “It’s no wonder one feels depressed, with the world burning up about one,” he said in his best David-Niven manner. Then, in an authentic Midwestern accent: “Hey, look! There goes the Alworth Building!”
    She turned around quickly, and her dark eyes danced in the light of the pyre. The Alworth Building was the tallest in Duluth. It burned magnificently. The whole downtown area was in flames now. To the left of the Alworth Building, the First American National Bank, after a late start, flared up even more splendidly due to its greater bulk.
    “Ooowh,” Jackie shouted. “Wheee!”
    They had lived these last years in the safe-deposit vault in the basement of the First American National Bank. Their precious store of scavenged cans and jars was still locked in the safe deposit boxes, and the canary was probably in his cage in the corner. It had been a very cozy home, though there were few visitors and they had had to kill most of those. Such luck couldn’t