Authors: John Barnes
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 12:15 AM MST. TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2025.
The moon was still low in the sky and dim. Darkness wrapped the old, empty tract houses in monochrome shadow; not just a ghost town, but the ghost of a town.
Arnie wished he’d asked Ecco to walk with him.
We could have gone over mission details, and I could’ve had somebody to eat late supper with.
Or he could have just taken a house close to the center of the city in the first place.
I’d already be home. Why did I act like a guy who wanted to be lonely?
He could see the watch’s lantern glinting half a mile away.
I could run and join them and just stay with them till they passed my house. Lots of people do that.
But the time to have done that would have been to catch them on Main, in front of the courthouse; now, they’d wonder what had frightened him. They might ask. What could he say?
Deep breath. Walk and breathe like you’re going to fight; if it turns out you are, it’s one less thing to worry about, and if not, it calms and clears the—
“Doctor Yang. Doctor Yang, doctus in the doctrine, the indoctrinated doctor.”
Arnie spun one step backward into the space he’d been about to walk into, cross-drew his knives and held them at ready. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Teeth gleamed in the dark under the blanket; the eyes were black blobs around the greasy promontory of the nose. “Expecting to stab me?”
“If necessary.” Arnie shifted his weight for a better stance.
“Now, whatever happened to that civilized old academic world where everyone took the time to express mutual respect, and dallied a while in chat, and listened patiently to each other before entering into the actual business at hand, Doctor? Shouldn’t we be sipping sherry and considering—”
“Manners and respect are products of enough people having enough time and comfort; you are the ones who put an end to that.”
Aaron slowly, loudly applauded him. He was the only thing moving or making a sound in the oblong shadows of the houses and the splintered and sliced patterns of dingy moonlight. “You are thinking of holding me and shouting for the watch.”
Arnie shrugged. “Why not?”
“Because if you don’t, you might get three more questions answered. Whereas if you do capture me, you have to hope my nervous system is no more programmed than Ysabel’s was, so I have seizures only about as bad, and that my heart and arteries are in no worse shape than hers, so that I don’t have a fatal stroke or heart attack.”
“I don’t have to hope that hard. I’m thinking about stabbing you.” Arnie shifted his weight and let his rear foot rise, extending it in front of him and setting it down. About four more steps would close the gap. “But I would like your answers to some questions.”
“What is your first question?”
“What do you do, now, when you have doubts about Daybreak?”
“Daybreak forgives me because I am so powerless, and I let Daybreak fill my mind, so that I can go on and do the work.”
Arnie advanced a step; he wondered if weapons were trained on him in the dark. An arrow or a spear out of nowhere . . . but one lunge, tackle him, hold him down, capture a Daybreaker, think how people would look up to him, just one leap—
Teeth showed under the blanket again, and the spots of the eyes narrowed. “Exchange, Doctor Yang. Have you told your owners that you’re talking to me yet?”
Arnie swallowed hard; the question was shrewder than it looked, for either he’d have to say “yes,” and be led along; or “no,” and admit that he was conspiring with Aaron.
Or I might . . .
“I’ve told them exactly as much as I think they should know; does that make them my owners, or me theirs?”
“Ownership is always an error. Now your question.”
Another step brought Arnie close enough to spring, but Aaron was cooperating . . . but, dammit. He couldn’t think of what he intended to ask Aaron. He stalled with, “What is the purpose of Daybreak?”
“Purpose is so human, and therefore useless, of no value, a shame. Gophers dig; they don’t calculate angles of repose around their burrows. Geese fly; they don’t do celestial navigation. We do not need to know the relative marginal propensities to consume of the grasshopper and the ant. Daybreak will free them from human imputation, which makes all things dirty; to the pure, all things are purposeless. No thinky-thinks, no wordy-words, no math, no meaning, no purpose.” When had he closed the distance? How did his hands now press down on Arnie’s wrists, lowering the knives? “Exchange. My question. Mister Ecco’s mission has changed and he is going to the Northwest.”
Right, that’s the wrong direction, I can just say yes
—Arnie’s head was turning slowly, indicating no.
“Going northeast.”
Arnie tried to keep his head still, but he had an eerie sense that Aaron was reading his thought:
don’t nod, don’t nod, for God’s sake don’t nod.
“Going farther east, crossing the Wabash?”
Don’t nod.
“Exchange,” Arnie croaked. His hands were down by his sides where Aaron had pressed them. They were face-to-face; Arnie could smell the dirty blanket and the foul breath.
“Ask.”
“What are you doing?”
“Daybreak only
does
till day is broken. After that Daybreak does not
do
. Daybreak
is
. I won’t take my final turn of exchange now; you will owe it to me.”
Arnie was alone on the street. In the distance, dogs and coyotes howled, the sharp yips mixing with the deep bellow of some hound; closer, he could hear the clatter of the watch, with all the gear hanging from their belts and harnesses; closest of all, the sound of the last breath of night wind rustling the leaves of a cottonwood.
Miserably tired, he headed home, resheathing his knives, his mind all on bed, reminding himself to record this in his journal, fighting off the question
Record what?
2 DAYS LATER. CAMP OF THE PEOPLE OF GAIA’S DAWN, IN THE FORMER HELLS CANYON NATIONAL RECREATIONAL PARK. 9:30 PM PST. THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2025.
It had been impossible to conceal that Larry was a Fed—“Dad, you’d have better luck trying to pass yourself off as Sasquatch”—so their story was that Debbie had converted him to Gaia’s Dawn while they were both being held by the Blue Morning People, and then the two of them had escaped during the Federal raid.
Tonight he would see
The Play of Daybreak
, the last part of what she wanted him to witness. The tribe performed it every Thursday; this was to be the 483rd performance by the People of Gaia’s Dawn.
“But—,” he started to say, and shut his mouth, angry with himself for that microbreak in cover.
“Yeah, I know, it’s a lot of work, but it’s really important,” Debbie said, giving him cover. The fast-calculation part of his brain had been about to object that that would have had the first performance on April 28, 2016—more than eight years before Daybreak day, and of course the People of Gaia’s Dawn were much newer than that.
So even though they’ve only been here since mid-February, when Debbie was a Founder, they’re already claiming a much longer pedigree.
Debbie’s hand found his under the table and squeezed,
u wil c
smile n stay very cool
while she explained, “
The Play of Daybreak
is set up so the whole tribe have parts in it—you’ll have a part next week—but there’s only a few on stage at a time, and while we’re not in it, we watch. Since I’ve only been back for one day, my part has three simple lines, and they’ll steer me through it. Otherwise you and I can watch together.”
The communal evening meal was a small chunk of unidentified meat and a fist-sized pile of wild greens with some roots and berries. With their current level of survival skills, he guessed around a third of the tribe might make it through the winter, and they’d lose all the kids under five.
At full dark, two big fires burned brightly on each end of the playing area, a flat grassless space backed by a low, crumbling rock cliff. The tribe’s dozen slaves carried out full-length mirrors and set them up on lashed-stick frames to mask the fires and reflect the light into the sandy playing area. The reflected firelight did not quite reach the cliffs except when a fire flared up; players spoke before a dark space where rocks or bushes occasionally swam briefly into being, like a world striving to be created out of chaos.
Larry expected something like a small-town Founder’s Pageant or a high-school production of
Our Town
. In the first few minutes, he realized he’d underestimated the power of conviction.
The story began with the Seven Misters: Mister Clock, Mister Gun, Mister Electron, Mister Atom, Mister Chemical, Mister Medicine, and the dark god who ruled them all, Mister Smart. Each of the actors, his face and chest painted to represent the power he spoke for, boasted that he feasted on the innocent creatures of the forest, the beautiful body of Mother Gaia, and human flesh, and finished by declaring, “But Mister Smart is smarter than all of us!”
Mister Medicine finished roaring that he would cut off everyone’s body parts and poison all their blood, and finally Mister Smart moved into the light.
Mister Smart’s head was a gigantic papier-mâché skull which extended a foot above his real head and reached down onto his chest. It was nearly all brain case with a tiny bespectacled and goateed face underneath. The body was naked except for a four-foot-long pink penis, probably a cardboard shipping tube, from which dangled two deflated basketballs. Mister Smart chanted on and on about his plan to rape Mother Gaia to death.
Jesus, that’s parodized from an old 50 Cent hip-hop piece I must’ve heard back when W was president,
Larry thought.
Too bad 50 Cent can’t sue him for plagiarism or defamation or something.
In the next scene, Gaia despaired and the six Mizzes vowed to die defending her. Larry thought Miz Ocean was pretty cute but Miz Desert had the best voice. The six Mizzes plotted to seduce the human, temporal servants of the Misters. Each Mister apparently had a human being who was his Number One Guy; the Mizzes were going to take them all out for “fun in the bushes,” as Miz Prairie declared, “before the Misters exterminate all vegetation.” That must have been the comic relief because people laughed.
The next dance and song was, in Larry’s lowbrow opinion, the fun part of the evening.
I’m sure that movie critic I used to date would use words like
primal
,
erotic
,
transgressive
, and
body-positive
, but I’m just a lowly Fed so I would say this is one great dirty show. If I had to live out in the woods pretending to be an Indian or a hippie,
this
would definitely be the high point of
my
week.
Each of the six human servants awoke the morning after the seduction to the weeping of the Miz, who then took the man or woman to meet Mother Gaia, before whom the servant fell down in adoration. When all six were in full adoration, Mother Gaia raised them up to form Daybreak, and her lover, Brother Sun, came to teach them how to make weapons for the Daybreak to come.
The servants of Mister Chemical, Mister Clock, Mister Gun, and Mister Electron danced with each other and copulated with various Mizzes to bring forth the Nanoswarm, a chorus of men costumed in lumpy gray and white rags. Mister Chemical’s servant teamed up with Mister Medicine’s servant to bring forth the thousand-headed Biotes, a chorus of women sharing one vast blanket-garment, with just their green-painted faces poking out. Debbie was one, and Larry thought it was her best work since
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
in second grade.
The Biotes vowed to kill the petroleum and all that came from it, the Whole Plaztatic World, by revealing its true nature and making it rot away into filth, and change it to nourishing food for all of Mother Gaia’s children.
Hunh. Well, I guess if you’re planning that your grandchildren will be cavemen, that’ll explain biotes to them.
Finally, Mister Atom’s servant came forward and proclaimed himself the protector of all. He would hurl eight mighty nuclear blows against the centers of the Plaztatic World. The first two would go amiss and leave California, the heart and center of Plaztatic World, as a broken and wounded place, but not destroy it to its utmost atoms, because so many good people lived there.
Holy crap,
Larry thought.
That’s why they backdated the tribe’s origins and claimed performances started so much earlier; in a few years this’ll be a successful prophecy.
Then, Mister Atom’s servant proclaimed, the next five nuclear weapons would be overwhelming and would smash down the Plaztatic World, but then in her compassion, Mother Gaia would choose to spare people of color in the Southern Hemisphere, so the fizzling of the Buenos Aires bomb would be a sign that she would never wholly sweep the face of the Earth again.
The rainbow in the Noah story,
Larry thought.
“I love you so much that you really better not piss me off.”
The actors and the crowd went into a frenzied chant of
so it was foretold, so it was to be, so it was, so we shall tell it
, over and over, as the drums built up to a mighty crescendo and the dancers formed a circle around the Servant of Mister Atom.
If they win, soon no one will know that they made the “prophecy” up after the event. Anyone can clearly see California isn’t in great shape but it wasn’t completely destroyed; five huge bombs did go off; and the one in Buenos Aires fizzled, leaving Argentina basically okay. Just because Mother Gaia was such a sweet chick. Or maybe she just loved to tango.
The dance finished. The servant of Mister Atom proclaimed that he would fly to the moon, and from there, when he saw the Plaztatic World trying to come back into Mother Gaia’s sacred sphere, he would hurl his bolts against it. He would depend upon the People of Gaia’s Dawn to help him to watch, and sometimes to fight and die for Mother Gaia when he told them it was necessary.
Hunh.
No mistaking it. It claimed that they talked and worked with the Daybreak robot, or base, or whatever it was, on the moon.
Thunderbolts from the moon
wasn’t even a bad description for the caveman-grandchildren.
The rest of the play was a lengthy singing-and-dancing-and-fighting number. The servants and the Mizzes defeated the Misters with the help of Nanoswarm and Biotes. Mister Smart’s dick-and-balls prop was removed and ceremoniously paraded around while he cried out at the loss. Gaia buried him alive (because he could not be killed) and all the servants vowed to sit eternal vigils at Mister Smart’s tomb against his rising.
In a big erotic dance number, the Mizzes rewarded the servants by making children with them—Larry thought that the former servant of Mister Chemical, who got Miz Ocean, got one hell of a good deal. The unfortunate servant of Mister Atom had to be childless, so he said farewell, charging the People of Gaia’s Dawn with reducing the remaining population of the Earth to about ten million before ascending the ladder into the sky.
I suspect that’s some cousin of the Indian Rope Trick, but it sure works well at a distance, by firelight.
This was the cue for the last big number, a dancing demonstration about how there were tens, and tens of tens, and tens of tens of tens, up finally to 8×10
9
, the population before Daybreak, which had been cut down to 2×10
9
, which now must be reduced to 10
7
.
Jesus god. They’ve killed three-quarters of the people who were alive this time last year and the Servant of Mister Atom just told them to kill 199 out of every 200 that are left.
In all the celebratory cheering and whooping, Larry grasped Debbie’s arm and squeezed:
u right
She squeezed back:
we go now
He squeezed
C
.
Drifting through the crowd, agreeing with everyone who stopped them to say that it gave you so much to think about, they passed into the darkness outside the camp, and jogged away as quickly and quietly as they could. They were less than halfway up the ridge when they heard the angry cries behind them, and ran as if all hell were at their heels.