The Last Horizon Read Free

snow pile by the back door. Pulling her out was a lot easier than trying to get her to stop crying, and the whole scene would have been a disaster had Sandy not come out to help.
     
       I’m really not cut-out for this savior shit, and honestly, someone should have been watching this mouse. I see them though, trudging through the snow, trooping out after their dog who’s constantly whiffing for winter berries on frozen branches.
     
       Renting them the house was a good idea and here’s why: when I moved out here for good I didn’t look for work. I didn’t make my source of income known to anyone, and that’s the way I like it. But I almost forgot that small town people are nosy. They love to gossip, and someone in the area who cannot be identified as working there is definitely an outsider. The subject of gossip and speculation.
     
       I wanted to blend in, so I bought the house next door, rented to a nice family, and sent the money to the bank regularly. I kept my other finances separate from the local financial institution.
     
       The truth is I don’t have to work. Not now. Not ever if I live as I have been--modestly and well within my means. But from my personal history, work is all I have. It’s all I know. It’s actually who I am.
     
       I know what it means to look back centuries on the legions of soldiers that marched into battle and said the ominous words from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Even as late as this war with the Serenians, the phrase is written on the backs of tactical helmets and body armor of grunts in the field...and so the tattoo of death remains unchanged to present day.
     
    I am become drunk. That is what I know today. I am become vodka. Perhaps that’s a better way to put it. There’s a mil-spec assault shotgun in the bathroom and one by the door. I keep a Raven automatic pistol stashed in the couch cushions in the living room where I sit and watch the endless parade of interstellar news on a split-screen telecom. I keep a 24 hour clock on the wall so I know if it’s night or day. I’m often confused about if I need a drink or if I’ve just had one.
     
    The groceries are delivered twice a week by a faded yellow and silver hovering automaton from the local chain so I don’t have to drive to town and interact with human beings. My list never changes from white bread, liquor, hamburger and eggs, some milk for my morning cocktail, and some lemonade for the afternoons if my stomach can take it.
     
    Mostly though, the mystery of why my useless life is guarded with such energy is in fact a mystery to me as well. I have not produced anything of value in this life. I am a sociopath. I killed small animals as a boy and I’ve gone on to kill humans with frightening efficiency in the service of the military. To my understanding, my extraction from combat years ago was fast and covert.
     
    I don’t remember much, the Alliance found my body crushed and half dead. It took a year, and the surgeons thought my recovery a miracle. So here I am, reconstructed and released as Fenmore Scott.
     
    If by elimination a man can contribute to the sum of things, then show me the math. Here’s the real rub: now, with drink and sloth, I have drifted aimlessly into alcoholism. I stagger around in my fart smelling sweats, a hairless ape with some education and two biomechanical legs and a left bio-mech arm that can punch a hole through a concrete wall.
     
    All this hardware cognitively integrated and sheeted with layers of synthetic tissue and epidermal membrane. They look and feel so real, and sometimes I forget that I’m a host to interlocking cybernetic neuro-transmitters and silicone micro-implants. I am become bionic.
     
    Picture the scene of the neighbor’s child trapped beneath a hundred plus pounds of snow and ice. Her rescuer, drunk with a beard crusted stiffly with dried drool, stinking of a month without a bath; stumbling, and