The Day After
Rom #66 (May 1985)
The war is won. There is nothing
for him here. All he has left of his
humanity is the desire for its return.
The heroes came together. Nations put
aside old grudges. The giant space-gun
did its job. The aliens are gone.
Four-point-eight billion people saved
and two centuries of war finally over,
he leaves behind a planet at peace
to search the distant starways for
some compensation for the loss his
circuits cannot translate into indifference.
Her parting kiss warms a surface that has
stayed cool within the corona of newborn
novae. Rocket-pods fire and soon he is
beyond the reach of weather. He wishes he
could stay with her, but there is still a stolen
planet to recover1 and long-lost comrades to
share news of war’s end with. He passes a
flock of burning meteors and cuts through the
curtain of light hanging over the Northern
magnetic pole, his silver form haloed in green.
A simulation of a man could only ever offer
simulated love. She deserves more than that.
He crosses paths with Bhaskara-II and EXOSAT
and then the Moon is behind him, its fading
gravity less substantial than the pull of the
woman he left behind, the woman he
rescued from kidnap and death-trap, the
woman he stood beside against alien despot
and supervillain, the woman who saw the
man inside the machine, the woman who
taught him even a cyborg could dare to love.
- See issue #27, “Turnabout is Fair Play!” ↩
