Last Bender

Something, growing suspicion perhaps, propelled Dr. Ruth Bryson from Owen Bradlee’s apartment, down the elevator and into a Personal Commuter Pod station a block away. She hadn’t even brushed her teeth.
The morning air was chilly and dry. It blew down on the concrete platform, two stories above the street. She leaned against the dark blue [...]

The morning of the day his wife, Dr. Ruth Bryson, was to arrive Leonard Bryson awoke with an almost adolescent shudder of anticipation. He had not been a reflective man, more a sensation seeker bent on satisfying his own curiosity, a doer, but he had, since retirement, surveyed his personal conduct with a shock. It [...]

Loopy with booze, Bryson sat back into the black foam seat and toyed with the radio. Clouds, enormous hunks of coal with little lightning forks leaping between them, approached from the north. The rest of the sky was achingly blue, in every direction. She passed over Seneca Lake. The land about was parched, the meadows [...]

Once Veronica began taking Paregane their lives returned to normal very quickly. It was almost as if nothing had happened. But something, of course, had happened. The world didn’t fit the explanations. It marked Felix in ways he was trying to understand and understanding eluded him.
Veronica recovered both physically and mentally. She spent her days [...]

At the first sign of light, a pink and yellow lightening of the ceiling, Felix’s eyes snapped open like rubber gloves. Sleep done before it had even started. He felt like he had been thrown suddenly out of a painless place and into a harsh, discordant one and lay there in disbelief that it was [...]

“Perfection,” the corpuscular, oscillating alias of Chairman Aung said, “is the ideal we may never attain but must constantly strive towards. Excellence is the means to that end, the path we choose to take, ever mindful of the destination.
“A ruthless honesty, dedication to fact, respect for process, a relentless pursuit of that which we know [...]

The way was familiar. The flat stones beneath his feet were warm and smooth. Myrtle and ivy drifted over the path. As he walked along he thought, stone, myrtle, ivy. To the right was a low wall of cracked and water stained stucco and beyond the wall stood an orchard of apple, pear and peach. [...]

“There you are,” she said, dawn in the steel light slits on the ceiling. Forest Glade wafted in. Felix sniffed at the air. It smelled off to him, metallic. Veronica stretched and got out of bed. She went into the bathroom and filled a glass with cold water. He leaned up on his elbows and [...]

After Felix left she straightened up the house, made the bed, washed the dishes. The stale air was making her a little nauseous but she brushed it aside and determined to make the phone calls to Fairbanks and Winnipeg, where she left messages (it was still night in both places). The Cryovac was more involved; [...]

The day disappeared into its end, vanished like no other day had in his memory. Felix felt like he had only just sat down when lunch came and again, when the screen zeroed out at the end of the day he could hardly remember even being there. It was a little worrisome, almost as if [...]