Toys

Chapter 115

Slow death equals slow torture.

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, he was the one in a prison jumpsuit and shackles. He was the one staring at the stainless steel slow death machine that was set up at center stage in the operating room.

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 you- from yourselves! If Elites are guilty, that is our only crime.”

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.