Daybreak Zero d-2

by John Barnes

  Bambi said hi and jumped up and hugged him, giving him cover to compose himself from the shock: the other prisoner in the cabin was his own daughter, Debbie.

  When they let go of each other, he had his game face on again. He asked Bambi the basics (was she unhurt? could she fly the plane home if they fueled it? was she sure she had room for a takeoff from US 95?) while he rested his hand on her arm, squeezing in Morse:

  2moro eve b ready sunset

  Bambi squeezed back QSL (message received).

  QRV 2 run? (Are you ready to run?)

  C. (Yes).

  QSO deb. (Relay this to Debbie).

  C.

  Larry had learned squeeze code back in the ’90s when he’d just been starting with the Bureau, and later taught it to Debbie back when she thought that her dad being in the FBI was cool and she’d been preparing to be rescued by her dashing dad from terrorists or a serial killer. Whenever he or Debbie hugged, they’d squeeze and tap didit, didahdidit dididah didididah, dididah—i luv u.

  After Daybreak, as the most experienced intelligence/law enforcement agent Heather had recruited, Larry had taught it to everyone.

  Thirty years and this was the first time he’d ever used it. Just goes to show there’s no such thing as unnecessary training.

  It was lousy tradecraft, but he decided he’d have to be human. “And what are they holding you for?” He reached forward, as if brushing the hair from Debbie’s eyes.

  From the door, Michael Amandasson said, “She’s no concern of yours. She’s a slave.”

  Mensche turned, letting his hand fall onto Debbie’s. “She is not a slave. She’s on American soil and we have the Thirteenth Amendment.”

  “That doesn’t apply to the Blue Morning People. Come with me now, Agent Mensche.”

  Mensche fixed his gaze on the tribal’s face as if contemplating arresting him, and kept holding Debbie’s hand, squeezing i luv u.u 2 dad.

  CF w bambi

  C. go now. QMO. luv u.

  luv u 2. CL.

  QMO meant problem with interference; CL meant talk later.

  As he walked to the barn to inspect the Stearman (he barely knew enough to identify it as an airplane, but Bambi would have plenty of time tomorrow) and then to the visitor center to use Bambi’s radio to call for the ransom, he managed to sound politely interested as Michael Amandasson explained to him, in elaborate detail, that by interfering in a tribal custom like slavery, Mensche and the whole Federal government were being racist, sexist, culturist, and extremely judgmental. He even smiled now and then.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:13 PM MST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.

  “The EMP hit right at noon today,” Arnie said. “So, yes, it could have been just a coincidence—maybe forty-five different tribes, everywhere from the Ouachitas to Big Bend and the Sangre de Cristos to Texarkana, all started moving at once, because they all happened to have working radios and we pissed them off, and then the moon gun happened to wait a long time to fire, so the moon gun just happened to be a perfect distraction by pure chance at the exact moment when all the tribes just happened to wander into Mota Elliptica simultaneously.”

  “Why are you throwing all the sarcasm at me, Arnie?” Heather said. “I just asked if it could be a coincidence.” She poured him a shot of whiskey and pushed it over to him.

  They sat in her office above her living quarters, in the old Pueblo Courthouse. He’d only come in with the rest of the survivors from Mota Elliptica that afternoon. She said, “Streen gave me his action report; no matter how much he blames himself, no one could have kept the tribals from wrecking it.”

  “It was bad,” Arnie said, taking the whiskey in one quick gulp.

  “Chris tells me the Post-Times will call it the Battle of Mota Elliptica. He says that way maybe people will get that we’re at war. I don’t want a panic—”

  “But it might be time for one,” Arnie said. “Uh, look. I’m not at my best explaining stuff right now. But I’ve gotta make you see it, Heather, really, we’re sunk if you don’t. How many times have I been wrong about anything this big?”

  “Arnie, I understand it was rough; Colonel Streen is shaken up and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”

  Arnie winced. Rough. Bad. And she thinks Streen is just shaken up? She can’t have any idea what it was like… . Christ, why am I trying?

  As dawn came up on the morning after the attack, Streen’s forces had relieved the three other isolated buildings still holding out, but at the other four working stations, a few bodies lay near the doorways, plumed with arrows and lances, and the rest were burned and smothered inside, curled against walls with hands over their faces. The four radio techs inside the control bunker had apparently been forced back into the flames at spearpoint.

  Besides Trish, twenty-two other engineers and technicians were confirmed dead, though a couple might yet find their way in, out of seven missing. Streen’s final count on his military forces was sixty-four dead—thirty-eight of his own TNG infantry, eleven of the President’s Own Rangers, and thirteen of the Texans (eleven of those, along with one of the Rangers, in a single, too-clever ambush). They were missing three infantrymen, a Ranger, and a TexIC; an actual majority of the survivors were wounded.

  “Try to tell me one more time,” Heather said. “Slowly, don’t yell, don’t treat me like an idiot.”

  “Sorry,” Arnie said.

  “Quentin told me he thought the scientist that was killed next to you was, uh, important to you.” She poured him another shot, his fourth since they’d begun the informal debriefing. “Here,” she said, patting her immense belly. “Drink for those who can’t.”

  Arnie took it in one gulp, again, and said, “Yeah. I’m crying. I didn’t even notice I was. But I’m crying.”

  “Well, it’s about time.”

  Arnie looked down, wiping his face and keening. She let him cry, until finally, wiping his face, he said, “Trish Eliot was great… my number two on the job, my best friend there, maybe she’d’ve been more if there’d been time.” And the only person brave enough for me to tell her the whole truth, and to believe me. “Yeah, she was killed right beside me, and that was pretty awful.” Pretty awful is all the more description I can think of?

  Heather waited for him find his voice again. Usually you could count on Heather to listen.

  After a while, she said, “Arnie, there’s more evidence than you know about. Captain Highbotham’s observatory at Christiansted was attacked this morning—tribals came ashore in small boats from a big sailing yacht, and Highbotham and a party rowed out to the yacht and captured it while the local militia beat the raiders on the beach. Practically a pirate battle, but she won. And yes, it does look like the moon gun and the tribes are either talking to each other, or talking to some common superior. For one thing, we think they might have launched another EMP bomb while Christiansted was tied up in the battle, and Big Island, Cooke Castle, and Oaxaca were all under cloud cover. USS Bush, in the Indian Ocean, thinks they detected a flash, but it was daylight and low on the horizon. I guess we’ll know in three days. So… all right, Arnie, the moon gun isn’t just a leftover robot, because there’s way too much strategy happening and it understands way too much. And it’s not being run by some human overlord somewhere, because like you say, the communications pattern doesn’t fit. All right.”

  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 Googl
e-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.”

  The tall, thin man emerged from the shadows. The blanket covering the top and sides of his head, his long curly beard, and his large round eyes made him look like a cheap religious painting. Bare feet gripped the warm summer street above pirate-style pants—a big piece of a sheet wrapped at the waist, cut up to the crotch front and back, and sewed up the inside seam.

  Jeez, Arnie thought. With a zillion Wal-Marts out there to loot, he couldn’t just find some all-cotton basketball shorts?

  “My name is Aaron,” the man said. “Last fall, you were looking for me with every weapon and tool that plaztatic civilization still had.”

  “What are you here for?”

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Well, talk.” Arnie’s heart was pounding. This guy at least looked like Ysabel’s description of Aaron, who even now was the single most wanted Daybreaker. “Talk,” Arnie repeated. “If that’s what you came to do.”

  “Oh, that’s what I came to do, Doctor Yang. Doctor, from the Latin doceo. Taught, educated, having mastered the documents, learned the doctrine, having been indoctrinated.”

  “You sound like you used to teach English.”

  “I do, don’t I? After I go, will you look up all the missing English teachers to see if you can find a match?”

  “Just an observation.” Arnie shifted his weight.

  “If people would confine themselves to observations, everything would be fine. It’s their insistence on taking action that condemns the species.”

  “You’re one of us.”

  “I intend to be among the last of us, actually.” Aaron advanced to just out of arms’ reach. “So you want to see into the soul of Daybreak. Here I am. What do you want to know?”

  “How do you communicate with Daybreak?” Arnie asked.

  “That’s a rather blunt question.”

  “I’m blunt, and I don’t believe you’ll actually tell me the truth about anything. I might as well shoot for the moon.”

  “Nowadays, the moon shoots for you. I don’t share my colleagues’ optimism that if you u
nderstand Daybreak, you’ll join it. I think there are plenty of unredeemable people.”

  “And you don’t have any trouble with killing them.”

  Aaron stared at him, head cocked to the side. “So you are a statistical semiotician, an occupation that could have explained immense amounts about culture and society and all that, but in practice was used to refine methods of selling politicians and soap—not very well because no one could get funding for the basic science to underlie it.”

  Arnie brought his knives up slightly; he felt like his bowels were trying to pass a frozen cannonball. Aaron’s words were—

  “You could have told everyone about Daybreak before it happened, but it was the same old thing, wasn’t it? Give us the payoff from your research, first, and then we’ll pay you to do it. That was where you were last year, eh? You knew Daybreak was coming but they wouldn’t let you really study it unless you told them the answers before you studied it.” Aaron clicked his tongue. “Very tough on Doctor Arnie Yang, they don’t want the doctor, the know-er, the one who makes know-ledge, they want the doctus, the guy who already knows. Give us your results, better yet tell us we’re already right, and then we’ll pay you to do the research.” Aaron was standing close enough now for Arnie to just step forward and strike, his huge dark eyes holding Arnie’s. “And even now, eh?” Aaron said. “Even now, they want you to just tell them what to shoot. They don’t want you to understand Daybreak, do they?”

  “How old is Daybreak?”

  “Everyone I know, before they were in Daybreak, was in something that eventually flowed into Daybreak,” Aaron said. “You might say Daybreak is older than itself; whatever parts became the core of Daybreak were there before anyone spoke the word ‘Daybreak.’ At first it had many different names: the Coming, the Dawn, the Morning Glory, one goofy guy I knew said, ‘It’s Morning on Earth’ constantly. So I surely heard the word ‘Daybreak’ in that context at least a hundred times before I knew it would be the name of anything, let alone the thing it would be the name of.” Aaron cocked his head to the side, peering at Arnie. “Insightful, but very academic, Doctor Yang. Shouldn’t you ask about our troop dispositions? No wonder no one likes that incorrigibly academic Doctor Yang—”