I don't know if I ever thought I would be a part of this program; and I find myself a little confused about my role in this operation. Should I be comforting those stares and herds of nervous people I see out there? Should I be passing out water, arranging family interviews, silently wandering through the backstage, guiding the performance? I wonder at the time, and I think this is the time when I would be speaking to Darmell, setting up the witnesses in their positions and checking the time for the reporting logs.
He asks me my final words, it's not Lynd, I look up to an empty stranger, who knows none of it, none of me. Of course they had the decency to send a stranger, not a friend, though it wasn't for my sake, and I'm sure Lynd had to petition for the respite. They wouldn't think of those things themselves. I never had.
So what was the specimen thinking before death? they all knew they couldn't know after, and so they must wait until the very last minute, until I brushed against the icy wall, so much worse because I groped out for it; not passing though in natural time, but in tense expectation of the cold. I panicked at the microphone at my mouth, hadn't thought of my last words, I had no symphony to play for the few people that would remember and record my last sound, the last tones in the carbon dioxide I polluted into the air. My voice failed me,
"Am I going to die?"
I hardly knew what I said, but the world went away as the hood came down, and I felt very strongly that I was still waiting in my cell room, with my scratchy blanket against my face, dreading death, not facing it. that I was asleep in my apartment, fearing the sound of my alarm, afraid of waking up.
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