THAT EVENING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 5:45 PM MST. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2025.
Heather would rather
have been alone with Arnie, but everyone, including Arnie, had
agreed that it would be just too dangerous. So MaryBeth Abrams and
James Hendrix sat with her and Arnie while they waited for the
time. They had found a secure-enough room with windows; it was too
cold to have them open.
He’d had his
requests: a pitcher of Dell’s beer, a fresh steamed trout and fried
potatoes, and a can of pineapple for dessert. Every now and then, a
tear ran down his face, but otherwise he didn’t talk
much.
Finally Heather said,
“Arnie, it’s getting to be time. I didn’t mention it before now
because I didn’t want to trigger a seizure, but we found the
notebooks. Nobody will ever be alone with them, and we’ll watch
everyone who reads any part of them like a cat at a mouse hole. I
wish we could keep you; your ability to analyze—”
“Would only make me
brilliant at devising traps, sending you down wrong alleys, and
hiding the truth,” Arnie said. “And eventually I’d find a way to
plant Daybreak in some of you. I’m a smart guy and I spent my life
studying how ideas move, Heather. In the long run you can’t safely
talk to me with Daybreak in me, and you have no way to be sure
Daybreak isn’t in me.
“Besides, having me
pay for it, in public, will do you a thousand times more good as an
example than I would as a research subject. Just hit the obvious
themes about it: nobody’s above the law, nobody’s too big to be
seized by Daybreak, be alert, never never never talk to it, fight
it. Don’t save my reputation; you can’t afford to have anyone find
anything attractive about this.”
The sun descended; it
was inadvisable to let Arnie talk without interruption, but what he
seemed to want to do most was just share memories with Heather,
about the time before Daybreak, so they took turns interrupting
him, encouraging him to skip from one memory to
another.
When the time came,
as Arnie rose to take the final walk, James said, “Arnie, I know
you’ve been touching a piece of paper in your pocket. I have to ask
to see it.”
Arnie reached for his
pocket and collapsed in a howling seizure. Heather and MaryBeth
pinned him down; James picked that pocket. The guards rushed
in.
When Arnie was tied
to a stretcher, Heather said, “We knew this might happen. We’ll
proceed with the plan for the seizure; frankly I hope he doesn’t
come out.”
James showed Heather
and MaryBeth the note:
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
AND WE WILL ALWAYS
LOVE THE EARTH TOGETHER.
Arnie woke up as the
stretcher neared the scaffold, but he was too weak to walk, and too
disoriented to maintain any dignity. The militiamen lifted him from
the stretcher, bound his hands behind him, strapped the sandbag to
his feet, hooded him, and fitted the greased aircraft-cable noose
to his neck (“uglier but faster than rope,” MaryBeth had promised).
In the little square of the trap door, he was weeping, and
struggling for his balance, and when he asked Heather for a last
hug, his own whining tone must have humiliated him.
She held him tight
and close, and said, “Over quick, now. All be over quick. Just stay
quiet, now, Arnie. I’m so sorry.”
The muffled sound
might have been “Thank you” or “Fuck you.” His breathing was harsh
and irregular; MaryBeth said, softly, “He’s close to another
seizure.”
“Go in peace, Arn.”
Heather hugged him hard, one more time, and stepped back. Arnie had
requested no chaplain, and he couldn’t be allowed to say anything
to the crowd, so the executioner simply checked to make sure the
trap was clear, and pulled the lever. The gallows worked perfectly;
afraid of making a mess of things, the engineers had overdone
everything, and Dr. Arnold Yang plummeted into a broken neck and
pinched carotids.
The vast crowd made
no sound until the massed low moan as Arnie dropped; they walked
away as if they had all been part of some secret
shame.
As soon as they
lowered him and wheeled his body into the examining room, MaryBeth
swiftly checked for a heartbeat, poured the ice water into the ear,
focused a bright light on the pupils of each hideously protruding
red eyeball. “All right. This man is dead.” She felt around the
cable and added, “And unofficially, you’re lucky you didn’t
decapitate him with this rig.”
In Heather’s office,
after each of them had had a shot of whiskey, James said, “About
that note,” and Heather said, “Yes, of course, you’re right. I’d
know that messy block printing anywhere. It’s Allie.”