The Villagers, as they had come to call themselves, numbered in the tens of thousands, though they had thus far failed to organize any kind of global census and as such estimated their own numbers to be much higher than they in fact were. Osgood, on the other hand, estimated their numbers to be rather smaller than they in fact were. Osgood estimated their numbers, in fact, to be rather close to zero. The thing was that Osgood thought, indeed wholly believed, that there were no humans left on Earth whatsoever.

Which is part of why Saturday morning found Osgood lying on his back under his desk blowing imaginary dust off the coupled-power node on the back of his iBrary in a fair fret of consternation. The door to his compartment banged open and a voice blurted out, "Osgood! We ca..." and then paused because the speaker had been almost as startled by Osgood's head striking the underside of his desk as had Osgood himself. The speaker, however, had not been as directly and personally impacted by the event, however, which is why she simply stood there, mouth and door agape, while Osgood composed extemporaneous poetry which while it had a certain staccato performative quality would probably not be productive to repeat here.

"...and let me be perfectly clear," said Osgood, winding down, "that when I say 'backwash' I am in no uncertain terms referring to your gene pool, Ellis!"

He extracted himself from underneath the desk, still fuming and massaging the back of his skull with a free hand.

"Ah..." said Ellis, her eyes scrunched up a bit in trepidatious apology, "Well."

Regaining his compusure a bit, Osgood gestured vaguely at the monitor and said, "My wretched iBrary is on the fritz again. Seems to think there are only 78 gravity-press turbines operating in sector four, which is simply not the case, because There are in fact 85 gravity-press turbines operating in sector four, to say nothing of a field of celestial conversion banks and a few other relics. Indeed, if there were suddenly 78 gravity-press turbines in sector four, instead of 85, I rather expect I would have heard about it, because the better part of the starboard orbital would be showering under cold water!"

Ellis bit her tongue and squinted out the office window.

"For god's sake, what is it, Ellis?"

"Osgood, central asked me to inform you that the starboard orbital water heater has lost power."

"Ah..." Osgood looked vaguely green. He glanced spastically at the monitor behind him and then sat down rather sharply. "Well."

"That was rather my take on it, yes," agreed Ellis.