*
Henry Osterman was dying.
He stumbled into the provincial town of Harper on his own two feet, a pallid scarecrow of a man, his hair greasy, his clothes tattered, his fingernails curling in on themselves like shriveled worms after the rain.
Nobody could say how he had gotten there. The roads leading to Harper had been pulverized a quarter of a millennium ago by the wrath of thinking machines run amok. Tube trains and hoverbirds were technologies for a theoretical future when the world had learned to live without fossil fuels; multi and teleportation were the pipe dreams of lunatics. To get to Harper these days, you needed either a strong horse or a boat limber enough to steer through the debris clogging the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. [1] Osterman had neither.
The city itself was barely worth the effort. A few dozen dilapidated buildings huddled together at the bottom of a hill, that was all. The more prosperous cities nearby had pieced together a fragile shell of trade from the shards of yesterday’s civilization, but so far Harper had little to contribute. Still, you could get three radio stations again in Harper, and sometimes on clear nights you could see the feeble blink of a Chinese satellite. The local music scene was bustling. Drinking water was almost drinkable. Progress.
Henry Osterman materialized at the edge of town behind a heavy curtain of mist, propping himself upright with a twisted, splintery stick. Nobody recognized him.
Dogs bayed as he walked up Harper’s main street. Strangers were rarely a good omen these days, and this stranger seemed even more ominous than most. The local police force shadowed him as he made his way through the broken asphalt, past shopkeepers who made warding signs against disease and doom. Mothers shunted children back to the safety of their skirts. The town watchman stood by the old church bell, grabbed a hammer, and prepared to gong like hell. [2]
Osterman paid them all no heed. His attention was stubbornly fixed on some spot just ahead, always just ahead, some ten seconds in the future. [3] His path, though crooked, did not deviate.
Finally the vagabond found an alleyway between the bank and the ramshackle city hall. The town watchman exhaled a sigh of relief as Osterman hobbled through the alley and out of town, where he officially ceased to be of any concern. As the moon rose and the distant wink of the Chinese satellite broke through the clouds, Henry Osterman found his way to the promontory where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers met. [4] Jagged rocks far below glinted at him like the teeth of the world. [5]
A month ago, he had been the richest man alive.
And now here he stood, a soul alone and complete for the first time: free from the pressures of society, free from the constrictive bonds of government, free from the burden of friendships and obligations. Osterman surveyed the crossroads before him. Below, the rocks; above, the sky; around in every direction, forest. Which way should he turn? [6]
It had been a long and torturous journey to reach the summit, but the plunge to earth was over in an instant.