The thrumming faded, grew again. I watched the road’s shoulder, unable to see my attacker. It came into sight on my far left. The fact that its pilot was trying to kill me had only gradually sunk to the gut level where fear, hate and all of the survival instincts are stored. My heart was pounding. I began to cough as the smoke thickened within the cab. We were past the cornfields now and into an area of rolling terrain. I reasserted the autopilot’s program for sweeping off to my right, sinking.
The sounds of its engine laboring, the ’copter began to do just that. I could feel the force of the struggle quite clearly—machine against man, me on the side of the former. Gun forgotten, the pilot was fighting with his controls now. I countered his every move. The ’copter heeled over and plunged toward the earth.
I didn’t really see it happen. I think I was more than partway past when it hit, and the smoke had continued to thicken within the cab. By the time that I got the window open there were flames inside with me. It was a peculiar feeling, though… Whoever had piloted the thing was just a faceless abstraction to me, someone wishing me ill, not that I was eager to see anyone dead… But the computer—
I had been inside it. I had just gotten acquainted. And then I had forced it to operate to its own destruction. I had been inside of it at the crash, also, when its systems went wild and then stopped. I felt a small twinge of guilt then, even though there was no true sentience involved. When is a thing not a thing?
I began to go off the road once more. I turned the steering wheel again and it did not respond. I hit the brakes. They weren’t working either.
The truck kept right on going, off of the road, down a slope, headed toward a large outcropping of stone toward the center of the field. Was I irrational at that point? Probably somewhat. I coiled into my truck’s computer and it was dead, save for a couple of maintenance systems which were in maximum trouble. I had a feeling that this was it, with Ann not even there to enjoy my passing. Though maybe she wouldn’t have… I wasn’t certain. Once she had liked me, I was sure of that now. We had actually meant something to each other, it seemed, somewhere along the line…
Just in case, Ann … I thought then, with special emphasis. Just in case … this is it… and I think it is… I know that The Boss got me here from the machines, not from you . . . Smell your flowers . . . If you hear me now, it’s not the way I want to go—if I have to—but I know this one isn’t yours … I won’t go cursing you, for just keeping me company awhile—despite your Grade B illusions… I wish I remembered more, though… You’re the only one who might… hear me now… and I’ll give you a good-bye on that. You could have done better than Barbeau, though. Smell your damn flowers, lady…
… And then the engine sounds grew louder and louder and louder—until I realized that they were not all my engine sounds. I felt the presence of other functioning computer systems nearby. Then came the shadows. And the jolt
I was sweating and choking and full of panic, but as the shadows paced me and the first one made contact I understood.
Two other trucks had left the highway, pursued me, caught up with me, were pacing me. The one to the right had just made contact, with a grinding sound. Now I felt the impact of the one on the left. Metal screeched and buckled and fragments of my dream shot like meteors through my head, trailing fear in their wake.
A change of perspective… Flames heavy now… But I was no longer headed downhill. I was being turned. Like a pair of elephants helping a wounded comrade, the two trucks were redirecting my course, turning me away from the crash that waited at the hill’s foot.
It gave me a few moments more, but it was still no good. The flames were going to get me very soon. I was going to have to get out. That meant jumping, and I knew that jumping at this speed would kill me.
I looked to my left. The truck on that side was no longer in contact. The one on the right was pushing, herding me now. Only a meter and a half, perhaps, separated me from the vehicle to the left. Its door had even sprung when it had ground against my truck. It was partway open, perhaps wedged in that position.
A leap across. If I could make it… I had to make it. It was the only way open to me, the only chance to go on living.
I swung my door open, holding it against the wind, edging myself around on the seat, facing outward. At the rush of air, flames leaped at my back, singed my garments. I looked downward and that was a mistake. I tore my gaze away to stare once again at the racing sanctuary, so near. What was I waiting for? Just to let the fear eat away at my resolve? There was really no choice. I made up my mind exactly where I would grab hold.
I leaped.
… Pouring rain. The grating noise that passed beneath me as we nosed downward… My mother’s scream… The thunder and the crash… Blackness that went on and on and on and would not go away—oh, no!—forever…
Blackness.
Silence.
Blackness and silence.
And in the midst of these, pain. My head…
The pain lessened at intervals and my mind floated—a kind of drunken, disengaged feeling. Not unpleasant, for anything which kept thinking at arms’ length was welcome.
I seemed to be lying on my back somewhere, though I could not be absolutely certain. I possessed no particular sensations save for the pain and that feeling of position. Later, though, it felt as if my head were resting upon a pillow.
I tried to cry out. I heard nothing.
A sense of profound wrongness had been with me for a long while.
How long?
Days? Weeks? I had no idea, save that it was no short interval.
My thoughts drifted back to the crash, over and over again. Was this death—consciousness drifting in a dark, silent void, still bearing the pains of its passing? There were times when I believed this. Other times, I felt something like an unseen hand upon my brow.
See?
Could it be that I had been blinded? Deafened, too, possibly? The thoughts made me want to scream. If I did, it was like that tree falling in the forest for me.
Blackness and silence.
Gradually, the pain subsided. By then, I had been through periods of panic and nightmare irrationality, of despondency, lethargy, despair. There were times when I could not draw the line between waking and sleeping. I knew who I was, but I did not know where or when I was.
What changed all of this was the food. Why should a disembodied spirit want or need food? My mouth was opened gently, and a bit of broth—from a squeeze-bottle, it seemed—came into it. I gagged. I choked for a while, but finally I got some down.
That moment marked my certainty that I was in a hospital bed—blind, deaf and paralyzed. It is strange that such a horrible realization should be, however briefly, accompanied by a feeling of relief. But at least I knew where I was, and that I was being cared for. All of my dark metaphysical speculations fled. I was alive and being treated. I could now begin hoping for recovery…
I marked the passage of time by my feedings. I put off thinking about the accident for as long as I could. But eventually I came to dwell upon it.
Were my parents alive or dead? Were we in beds but a short distance apart, or… If they were alive, were their conditions anything like my own? I thought about the car’s plunge again and again. I might have done better than they did by virtue of having occupied the back seat. Or, the car might have done a complete flip, leaving me the worst off.