"I want you both to know I love you very much." The man sat hunched beside his sister and mother, with the news of the terminal illness which would take his life within a few weeks.

***

Somewhere in the darkness his father waited, dead for 41 years, long and difficult years for Steve without a father. Difficult years for the growing boy, whose mother in the past was an alcoholic and mentally ill, and whose stepfather abused him emotionally and physically. Happiness eventually trickled up from high school friends, work friends, school, work, play, and family. He loved to sit in his boxers after work and be a geek. He loved robots, video games, expert tunes on his guitar, computers, and reading.

The robot was a kindly automaton, patient as death for the crossover between worlds. Its eyes glowed in the black outside the open curtains where Steve lay in pain, the cancer snaking throughout his entire body from the original source.

"We were made for each other," the robot said, and spread its arms. Steve stepped into the void between them, which was kindlier than the world, full of stars and darkness—he took a breath then did not take another one, and was gone.

His sister had waited for the last day of summer. He had waited, too. The night closed on a light snuffed out and a little bit of love gone from the world.

 

 "Take it to the Limit" - The Eagles1976