Summary: By Robert Reed Read by Joel Nisbet Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Finished by Robert Reed 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 thoughts, 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 forwards with my right foot. The traffic AI stabbed my eyes with its brightest beam, shouting, “Go back!” But I stepped forwards 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. Then I found myself sprawled in a heap on the hot pavement. For a thousand years, I lay alone. Then a single face appeared, scared and sorry and pale and beautiful. Gazing down through the mayhem, she said, “Oh, God. Oh, shit!” With my battered mouth, I said, “Hello.” Leaking a sloppy laugh, I told her, “No, really, I’ll be fine.” Then I asked, “What’s your name?” “Careless,” she said. “Stupid,” she said. And then she said, “Or Bonnie. Take your pick.” # I picked Bonnie. A beautiful young woman, she had short dark hair arranged in a fetching fish-scale pattern and a sweet face made with bright brown eyes and skin that looked too smooth and clear to be skin. On most occasions, her smile came easily, but it could be a crooked smile laced with weariness and a gentle sadness. There was a girlish lightness to her voice, but in difficult circumstances, that voice and the pretty face were capable of surprising strength. “What should I do?” she asked the crumbled figure at her feet. “What [...]
