Lucy covered him with a pistol as the soldiers-human soldiers-loaded him onto a gurney and strapped him down.
“We demand unconditional surrender!” Lucy snapped as soon as he was secure. “Right now, right here!”
I might have admired something in his defiance, except that it wasn’t born of courage. Just sheer egotism and ignorance. He believed the world had somehow selected him and his kind, that somehow-despite the ludicrousness of the very idea-Elites were a
Clearly, he felt no remorse for Elite crimes against humanity, no compassion for the suffering he had caused, no accountability for the horrors he’d unleashed against us and the world in general.
“Yes, these skunks are exactly who I mean,” Lucy said.
“You’re doomed!” he screamed. “You already nearly destroyed the world and, without us, you’ll do it all over again!”
“Shut up!” I screamed as I clamped my hand onto his throat, making sure he obeyed my command.
I leaned my apoplectic face over his and continued.
“Now listen-and I’m talking here to that thirteen percent of you that
And then I told him what we were going to do.
It was probably needlessly cruel. And needlessly human. But hey, when I was finished, Jacklin had gone completely white with terror.
Which, I confess, made me feel pretty good.
And then I got a hug from Lucy.
And that made me feel even better.
Chapter 115
That was what former President Hughes Jacklin must have been thinking one morning, three months later. He lay in an operating theater inside the vast and ultramodern New Lake City Hospital, waiting to be punished for his role in crimes against humanity. And he certainly had a very good idea what to expect next.
There was no arrogance on his face now. After all,
Lucy and an impressive assemblage of human leaders, his judges and jury, stood facing him, ready to watch his sentence be carried out.
In fact, over two billion humans would be watching from all around the world.
Me? I was right there too. I was the appointed executioner of the president’s sentence. And I didn’t mind that duty at all. Justice is a wonderful thing-a human idea, one of our very best.
“All right, it’s time,” President-elect Chantal Dugare said to Lucy, embracing her and kissing her cheeks. “The world is watching to be certain that justice is delivered here today.”
The world really was watching. The war was all but over, and though there would be strong pockets of Elite resistance for some time to come, they currently had no central leadership to organize them, their seemingly invincible military was severely crippled, and they were outnumbered.
The Elites began to crumble fast without having humans to serve them. They were fine overseers as long as we were doing all the labor, but when it came to things like simple maintenance, even feeding themselves, they turned out to be surprisingly helpless.
Lucy stepped forward to address the former president a final time. She was wearing a simple black dress, and it struck me that I’d never seen her in a dress before. She looked very elegant, but somber and also restrained-especially for Lucy. It was as if she was attending a funeral, a state funeral, which I suppose she was.
“You stand convicted of plotting the most heinous crime in recorded history, the managed extinction of the human race,” she declared, her voice ringing out strong and clear. “Have you anything to say in your defense? I cannot imagine that you do, but this is the time, war criminal.”
Hughes Jacklin tried to put on an air of authority and Eliteness, but it was difficult to do so in manacles and with the certainty of slow death coming down on him like a falling ax.
“Humans would have destroyed the planet,” he finally said in a hoarse whisper. “Elites saved it. I cannot be ashamed of that. We saved
Lucy wouldn’t let him get away with that.
“But that was long ago. And then, instead of helping us become better citizens, you enslaved and degraded us. Elites also ignored the tremendous work we’ve done building civilization-including the creation of Elites. Without us, you wouldn’t even exist.”
“We were trying to prevent another irreversible disaster,” Jacklin said, his voice rising in desperation.
“So are we,” Lucy retorted. “And we’re going to do it in exactly the same way-by ridding the world of your kind. Not extinction though. Something even better.”
She turned to me. “Let the sentence be carried out. May God have mercy.”
With Hughes Jacklin’s dread-filled eyes fixed on my every move, I walked to the slow death machine. He almost looked human now, and that made this a little more difficult, but not impossible. Justice had to be carried out, and here, too, we humans had learned and grown.
My hand touched the controls, and the laser probe began its work.
Chapter 116
When I finally stopped the terrifying machine-after only forty-five seconds-the onlookers were so quiet, it was as if no one were in the operating theater. And yet billions were watching, in every country, on every continent.
Hughes Jacklin’s face was still fixed in a stare, but now his eyes were glassy and he seemed to be looking at something that only he could see.
Then he recovered slightly, like he was waking up from a light sleep. His gaze focused on Lucy, and some kind of recognition finally dawned on him.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said with almost excessive politeness. “May I assist you in any way? Anything at all?”
Lucy answered, “Tell me your name and your job description.”
Hughes Jacklin started to speak, but suddenly his forehead wrinkled with confusion and alarm.
“I–I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t-I’m not really sure.” Then he looked in dismay at the shackles on his ankles and wrists. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked, as a child might.
“Let’s just say that you have a debt to pay to society. And you’ll have the rest of your life… to serve.”
Epilogue
