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Finished
by Robert Reed
Robert Reed’s most recent novel, The Well of Stars , came out from Tor in
April and his new short story collection, The Cuckoo’s Boys , was published
around the same time by Golden Gryphon Press. In his latest story, he
reveals what it takes to survive.
****
What did I plan? Very little, in truth. An evening walk accompanied by the
scent of flowers and dampened earth, the lingering heat of the day taken as a
reassurance, ancient and holy. I was genuinely happy, as usual. Like a hundred other
contented walkers, I wandered through the linear woods, past lovers’ groves and
pocket-sized sanctuaries and ornamental ponds jammed full of golden orfes and
platinum lungfish. When I felt as if I should be tired, I sat on a hard steel bench to
rest. People smiled as they passed, or they didn’t smile. But I showed everyone a
wide grin, and sometimes I offered a pleasant word, and one or two of the strangers
paused long enough to begin a brief conversation.
One man—a rather old man, and I remember little else—asked, “And how are
you today?”
Ignoring the implication, I said, “Fine.”
I observed, “It’s a very pleasant evening.”
“Very pleasant,” he agreed.
My bench was near a busy avenue, and sometimes I would study one of the
sleek little cars rushing past.
“The end of a wonderful day,” he continued.
I looked again at his soft face, committing none of it to memory. But I kept
smiling, and, with a tone that was nothing but polite, I remarked, “The sun’s setting
earlier now. Isn’t it?”
The banal recognition of a season’s progression—that was my only intent.
But the face colored, and then with a stiff, easy anger, the man said, “What does it
matter to you? It’s always the same day, after all.”
Hardly. Yet I said nothing.
He eventually grew tired of my silence and wandered off. With a memory as
selective as it is graceful, I tried to forget him. But since I’m talking about him now, I
plainly didn’t succeed. And looking back on the incident, I have to admit that the
stranger perhaps had some little role in what happened next.
I planned nothing.
 But a keen little anger grabbed me, and I rose up from the bench, and, like
every pedestrian before me, I followed the path to the edge of the avenue. Later, I
was told that I looked like someone lost in deep thought, and I suppose I was. Yet I
have no memory of the moment. According to witnesses, I took a long look up the
road before stepping forward with my right foot. The traffic AI stabbed my eyes
with its brightest beam, shouting, “Go back!” But I stepped forward again, without
hesitation, plunging directly into the oncoming traffic.
A little pink Cheetah slammed on its brakes. But it was an old car with worn
pads—a little detail that couldn’t have found its way into my calculations—and
despite the heroic efforts of its AI pilot, the car was still moving at better than eighty
kilometers an hour when it shattered my hip and threw my limp body across the
hood, my chest and then my astonished face slamming into the windshield’s flexing
glass.
Again, I tumbled.