Trish believed me because she was my friend. Heather’s my friend too. I just have to find a way to make it real clear. “So look, here’s the thing, put it all together, boss, use that cop brain. How old is Daybreak and how completely integrated? The moon gun and the tribes work together. Encrypted radio all over the Lost Quarter. They’re plugged in to each other and they always intended to be that way, and that took preparation way in advance. Well, how far in advance? Daybreak themes were there in coustajam music back when that was niche-stuff on YouTube. And if we’re right about how the moon gun got there, it must’ve been designed all the way back in the days of Google-One, Facebook, and Twitter. I can’t prove more than ten years, but I’m gut-certain Daybreak started before the turn of the century.”
“Why do we care how old it is? Isn’t this just Professor Yang getting caught up in a research project?”
“No,” Arnie said. “The whole world keeps pushing me to find the magic bullet, but until we understand how it got here, and how big and complex and sophisticated it is, we don’t even know if there can be any kind of bullet, magic or otherwise. I’m trying to figure out if it’s a tornado, a giant shark, a serial killer, or a forest fire, and you’re all insisting I tell you what caliber bullet to use.”
“You’re becoming angry again,” she said, softly. “And before Daybreak, you were always ‘don’t ask me what to do, let me just study.’”
“And if I’d been able to study then, we might know what to do today.” His own voice sounded pathetic to him, now. “People want an answer, and they want me to guarantee it’s true. They don’t want the answer that’s true.”
“Yeah. All right. You had me with your point that I wish we’d let you research it back then. Tell me the rest of your idea.” She leaned forward, hands resting on her knees, listening intently or resting her back or both.
Arnie nodded. “Look how fast the tribes happened. They weren’t even in our maybe-trouble file back in March; first we heard of them was right after the war scare and Open Signals Day, at the end of April, when Larry Mensche came in with that report, and then all of a sudden Springfield, Steubenville, Augusta, and Kettle Valley were all trashed between May 10th and May 12th. Maybe a tenth, maybe more, of the surviving population is in tribes, you see? Daybreak had the moon gun ready to go, physically, and it had the tribes ready to go, as a cultural idea with organizers and bards and everything.”
“Bards?”
“Something I got out of interrogations. When Daybreak had Jason, for at least three years before 10-28-24, he was fantasizing intensely about being a wandering poet for tribal people and wandering between Castles—and none of that existed then, but in less than half a year, it all did. You see? Daybreak prepared him for a world that Daybreak had designed.”
Heather tented her hands and leaned back. “Do we have to decide anything tonight?”
“No, but soon. Look, if I’m right, Daybreak is so far ahead of us—”
“All right, Arn, you’ve given me the reality.” She was nodding, but she looked tired and sick. “Let me give you the politics, and then let’s see if we can drag the reality and the politics anywhere near each other, and find a way to accommodate them both. I realize it’s true, but you’re telling me the worst possible news, because if Daybreak is really everywhere, if we’re falling right into its plan, and we don’t even know what that plan is, if we have to doubt every move we make… oh, man, Arn. Not an easy sell either to Graham or to Cam.”
“But if I’m right, and this is true, then we’ve got to study this thing, understand what it’s capable of—”
Heather sighed. “Politically, Arnie, I need a program, some definite number of steps that will definitely defeat Daybreak, so I can get the resources for the study you need to do.”
“But you need the study to know what to do, to make sure we’re not falling right into Daybreak’s plan!”
“I know, I know, I know.” She waved her hand at him in the invisible yo-yo gesture that meant Calm down and shut up. “Arn, we’ve got to find a way for you to investigate this, I agree. But right now as far as they’re concerned, I’m the dumb bitch that wrecked one of our last big surviving generating stations to prove that the other side didn’t like us, and you’re my pet head-in-the-clouds Doctor Doofus. Olympia and Athens are looking for an excuse to cut us off and start back down the warpath with each other.”
“Do you believe me?”
“I believe I can’t dismiss you. So find me something somewhere. A few good pieces of evidence that we haven’t seen before. A real clear analogy. One good completely counterintuitive thing to try that works. Whatever. Just remember, Arn, the people in Athens and Olympia are much dumber and less patient than I am. It has to be so simple that even an old cop like me can explain it to frightened, imagination-free bureaucrats like them. I know it’s probably impossible but you’ll have to do it anyway. And soon—because if you’re right, we might already be too late. Want another shot before I throw you out and get my motherly sleep?”
“I want ten of them, but I better not.” He rose, wiped his face, and said, “Trish was the best, Heather. You don’t know what you lost.”
“None of us ever do.”
He followed her gaze to Lenny’s picture; she looked back at him soon enough to see the moment when he realized she was looking at the father of her child, the husband she’d lost in the first month of the Daybreak crisis, and he said, softly, “Sorry. I guess we’re all pretty clueless.”
“It makes us human, and if you’re right, that’s what this is all about—staying human. The world will never be able to add up how much we all lost, will it?” She looked at him steadily. “But I am sorry you never had any time together, and that in this new world, we never even have the simple time to grieve.”
He nodded his thanks for her sympathy, not trusting himself to speak, because he could hear the rest of the message as clearly as if she’d said it aloud: But we all know there’s nothing anyone can do.
ABOUT 20 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11 PM MST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.
Arnie walked alone; he’d taken an isolated house farther away from downtown, to give himself some privacy and space.
A scraping sound. He spun, cross-drawing his knives from his hip sheaths, hoping all the sai katas he’d studied—
“I’ll come out if you put away the knives. I mean you no harm.” The voice was behind him.
He leapt forward and pivoted. “If you mean me no harm, it won’t matter that I keep my knives out. Show yourself.”