His eyes moved faster. Monitors showed that his heart rate had increased sharply, along with his breathing. There was no pain save the pain of realization. Along with the chemicals, he suddenly realized how badly he wanted to live. He wanted to fight back, needed to struggle. But he could not. The lethal cocktail was already taking hold, doing its work, shutting down system after system. Nervous, respiratory, circulatory, end of story.
He would have screamed but could not.
Overhead, the light was bright and white. Clean, cleansing. Faintly, as thoughts and mind and the remnants of consciousness slowly slipped away, he fought to compose a final, last thought. It was not about the things he had done that had led him to this place and this point in time. It was not of happier days, or of how his life had gone astray and might have been changed for the better. It was not of food or of sex or laughter or sorrow.
It was of that last kiss, and how he might have done it better.
CHAPTER TWO
Animals appear and thrive and then go extinct. Plants cover ground like a green blanket, retreat, and return with greater fecundity. Life expands, contracts, shatters and recovers, sometimes falling to the margins of survival.
But the Earth endures. No matter the number of species that swarm its surface or fall victim to flood, earthquake, plague, tectonic drift, or cosmic catastrophe, the planet continues its methodical swing around its unprepossessing yellow star. The waves of the ocean roll on, the molten iron at its core seethes and bubbles, winds fitful or steady continue to scour its surface. Ice forms and retreats at the poles, rains drench the equator, and heat shimmers above its deserts.
One such desert in the south-central part of the continent called North America was about to receive a momentary upsurge in heat that was not normal.
The missile came in low and fast on a trajectory designed to evade even the most advanced detection systems. The warhead it carried contained considerably more bang than would have been suspected at first glance. Guided by both its programming and its internal sacrificial intelligence elements, it skimmed along the surface so low that it was forced to dodge the occasional tree and still-standing power transmission tower.