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| Dawn’s Early Light Edition | Price: 2 Quell THE STATUE AT THE EDGE OF TOWN By Senior Correspondent, Elara Vance
If you are reading this, the statue has broken. Good. It was meant to break. I designed the flaw myself in ’43, when they forced me to pose for the casting. They thought I was weeping with gratitude for my pardon. I was weeping because I knew no one would believe what I almost died to say. the republia times
Emrik climbed the wet granite plinth, his bad hip twinging with each step. He placed the chisel against the hairline crack and tapped once.
That was the lie. That was always the lie. Republia did not build statues to its strongest believers. It built statues to the ones it had to convince. The next morning, Emrik Thorne did not go to work. Instead, he walked to the statue with a small steel chisel and a rubber mallet—tools of his former trade. A crowd of seventeen people watched from the bus stop. No one called the authorities. The Republia Times stands by its reporting
Sarai read the sentence seven times. Then she blew out the candle and sat in the dark for a long while.
— E.V.
The current Minister of Information, Herah Dalmont, has issued a statement calling the discovery “a forgery of the highest order” and has ordered the immediate arrest of Emrik Thorne and Sarai Kessler. Neither could be located for comment.