Last Wednesday by Ben Trayne (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

Speeding along the highway, Theo finally began to feel better. He was doing something, he was getting somewhere. Where, he had no idea. He had not learned the first thing about his GPS, but at least, he was moving, and faster than he had imagined possible. And up here, the smells were better. The odors of char and smoke were diminished, and the wind that passed about him was clear and cool. Whatever had been wrong behind him, he was moving away from it. Surely he was going the right way, now. He restarted his music, and soon, he felt much better.

The piece he had selected was contributed by Katya, a thudding-bass techno song known to humans as “house,” Bunte Bummler's High Up On The Line.

Theo hit the groove, and he sailed. And sailed. What a strange bit of irony. He turned the music up and cranked up the bass, swerving to match the beat, and he fairly burned up the highway.

Following the oncoming breeze and the fresh smell of the ocean, Theo turned left, onto the Marina Freeway. Here and there were stopped vehicles, but not many more. He played the same music over and over again, and eventually, as it ended, he saw that the freeway was ending, too. He slowed, and noticed that the drop in speed came much more quickly than he had expected. His prolonged movement at top speed had sapped much of his available power. It was something he had not been told about. But then, who among his creators would have expected him to be traveling at full speed on an open highway?

Finding himself again among more shattered concrete and crumbled buildings, Theo moved much more slowly, eventually reaching West Washington Boulevard. There was no question as to the direction the breeze was coming from. He turned left. From that point, it was a straight path to the Venice Fishing Pier, and the Pacific Ocean. He passed only one more stopped vehicle on his way to the sand of the broad beach. The fishing pier, a favorite spot for so many for so long, had suffered thousands of fractures and was now mostly underwater. But to Theo, it was all new. And obviously, Audrey was not here. Theo proceeded slowly out onto the beach, and stopped as he beheld the sun descending into the western sky.

The human species that had created Theo, intent on their individual pursuits, had bred butterflies rather than to halt the destruction of their southern habitat or the dissemination of herbicides that had decimated their food supply. They had striven to stop the mowing of lawns with gasoline engines rather than to stop their automobiles, or to put out the thousands of underground coal fires that had begun to snuff out other forms of life, via warming of the planet. But none of that had mattered, after all. Because they had also distracted their government to deal with people who might possibly carry folding pocket-knives onto airplanes, rather than to confront and to stop saber-rattling, rogue regimes that had either bought or built nuclear weapons, and whose threats had not been at all empty. One attack had led to another, and now, they were all dead. Of course, Audrey was among them.

At least, Theo would not know the pain of death. He was destined to “sleep” at six-thirty. His memory, in fact, would have been obliterated by the magnetic burst from the thermonuclear blast that had wiped out Los Angeles, had it not been for the grounded shielding that had surrounded his home. He might have been thrown by the blast and broken, had he not been left to “sleep” on the side of the anchored mainframe that happened to be on the side away from the city. One might have argued that his nine hours of childlike terror were worse than death. Unlikely.

Theo could not quite believe the beauty of the sky over the ocean, in fact, he'd had no idea anything could be quite so beautiful. It was the final day of that, too, for a very long time, but Theo of course didn't know it. He did know, however, that Audrey would have to find him, now. He wasn't quite able to move, although he really wasn't sure why. His thoughts were beginning to come a bit more slowly, and his fear was going away. He did, however, have just enough power left in his dwindling supply to play a bit of music. So he played his favorite, an oldie from Daryl Hall and John Oates, as he and Audrey had danced to it many times. To Theo it had very special meaning, as he expected to become much more like a human being, as Audrey had promised. How he dearly loved his beautiful, sweet Audrey!

On it came, the hopeful, melodic, pleading strains of Wait for Me. Its length was exactly four minutes, nine seconds.

The time was precisely, six twenty-six.

****

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.

Ronald Reagan

33rd Governor of California

40th President of the United States

Copyright 2013 Benjamin Trayne

Text: Benjamin Trayne
Publication Date: 05-16-2013

All Rights Reserved