To Paradise

PART X

September 16, 2088

Dearest Peter,

I’m writing fast, because this is the last chance I’ll have—the person who’s going to find a way to get this to you is standing just outside my cell but has to leave in ten minutes.

You know that I’m going to be executed in four days. The insurgency needs a face, and the state needs a sacrificial lamb, and I was the compromise. I managed to get some concessions from both of them in return for being publicly hanged in front of a braying crowd, however: that they would leave Charlie and her husband alone, that she would never be punished for me; that Wesley will always treat her decently. No matter which side triumphs, she’ll be protected—or at least not harassed.

Do I trust them? No. But I also have to. I don’t care about dying, but I can’t bear to leave her here, in this place, alone. Of course, she won’t be alone. But he can’t stay here, either.

Peter, I love you. You know I do, and I always have. I know you love me, too. Please take care of her, my Charlie, my granddaughter. Please find a way to get her out of this country. Please give her the life that she should have had, if I had gotten out of here earlier, if I had been able to save her. You know she needs help. Please, Peter. Do everything you can. Save my little cat.

Who would have thought that New Britain, of all places, would one day be heaven, and this place so spectacularly rotten? Well, you did, I know. And so did I. I’m sorry for it. I’m sorry for it all. I made the wrong decisions, and then I made more and more of them.

My only other request—not to you, but to someone or something—is this: Let me come back to earth someday as a vulture, a harpy, a giant microbe-stuffed bat, some kind of shrieking beast with rubbery wings who flies over scorched lands, looking for carrion. Wherever I wake, I’ll fly here first, whatever they’re calling it then: New York, New New York, Prefecture Two, Municipality Three, whatever. I’ll pass by my old house on Washington Square and look for her, and if I don’t find her, I’ll fly north to Rockefeller and look for her there.

And if she’s not there, either, I’ll assume the best. Not that she’s been disappeared, or died, or interned somewhere, but that you have her, that you managed to save her in the end. I won’t even circle above Davids Island, or the crematoriums, or the landfills or prisons or reeducation or containment centers, trying and failing to detect her scent, cawing her name as I do. Instead, I’ll rejoice. I’ll kill a rat, a cat, whatever I can find, eat it for strength, and stretch my ribbed wings wide and let out a squawk, a sound of hope and anticipation. And then I’ll turn east and begin my long flight across the sea, flapping my way toward you, and her, and maybe even her husband, all the way to London, to my loves, to freedom, to safety, to dignity—to paradise.