A Stone From Heaven

"It's been a long time," Steve said.
Glasses clinked, silverware clattered on fine china, and the chatter of conversation filled the restaurant.
"It has, hasn't it?" Ray said. The two shook hands. Ray feeling that vague sense of uneasiness he always felt when he shook hands with Steve, knowing that the man could crush his hands to powder with a single flinch. Ray brushed the thought aside. He'd trusted this man with his life more times than he could count.
The two sat across from each other, in a moment of awkward silence, while they waited for drinks to arrive. The best of friends in their true identities, their mild mannered alter egos had actually never gotten along very well. One of the great mysteries of life, like glowing rocks that fall to earth from other planets, or stray bullets that destroy entire families.
"I read your article in the paper," Ray said. "About the meteor. A stone from heaven, I think you called it." It will be visible tonight, in the northern sky you said, right?"
Steve was staring out the window. The restaurant had an amazing view. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"Nothing," Ray said. And the two sat in silence for a time.
"We had some good times, didn't we, in the old days," Steve said when his sirloin steak, and ray’s almond chicken arrived.
"Nothing else like it," Ray said, cutting into his chicken with a knife and fork.
"I went to the old neighborhood today," Steve said.
"How was that?" Ray said, knowing that the neighborhood Steve spoke of was 2,000 miles away from the city.
"Everything's changing so quickly... I feel like a stranger when I go there… Come to think of it, I feel like a stranger everywhere these days.”
"Occupational hazard I guess. Are you still with Sharon?"
Steve shook his head. "She left me. She said she just doesn't feel the same way anymore."
"Is there someone else?" Ray said.
"How should I know?" Steve said.
Ray arched an eyebrow.
"No, there's no one else." Steve said. "...The truth is, I think the stress got to her."
"It is a lot to ask of anyone," Ray said.
"Just another occupational hazard, I guess," Steve said, looking out the window at the stars. "Do you remember being a kid, Ray? No worries, no responsibilities no- oh god Ray I'm sorry."
Ray shook his head, "Don't be. I did have a childhood Steve, and a very happy one. It just ended sooner than I would have liked."
"I just, I had a dream that I was a kid again last night. I was running down a hill, and the grass was so green, and the world was so bright. School was out and you could smell the summer in the air. I had this bright red bicycle that I couldn't wait to get on that hill with and before I could even ride the bicycle... I woke up. And the window was open. The breeze coming through had this chill to it. And it took me a few minutes to fall out of the dream, and realize that I'm a man now, and that another long winter's coming." Steve turned his head, the stars were bright, and there was a patch in the sky with a strange hue. Ray had seen it a few nights ago, actually. But it was smaller.... It was the kind of light that presages a storm, but tonight, as on that night, the sky was cloudless, silent.
"It's not going to pass us by, is it Steve?" Ray said. Speaking as the realization dawned on him. He chose his words carefully, lowering his voice, so as not to incite a riot in the restaurant. "It's headed right for us... isn’t it." he said, and this time it wasn’t a question. "How long have you known?"
"Just since last night. It started with the research for the article. It was supposed to be a nice human interest story. But last night I went out to the observatory to look at it again, there was something I didn’t like about its course. So, on a hunch and went and saw for myself; hundreds of thousands of miles away, but moving incredibly fast. I could see... I could see that it’s coming."
"You're sure. I mean... how can you be-" This time it was Steve's turn to arch an eyebrow. "Right," Ray said.
"I just wanted to say goodbye, Ray. You've always been there, and I can't tell you how much it's meant to me."
"But what about the others," Ray said. "Why only me?"
"Because you're a good friend Ray, and... You have a pragmatic mind. The truth is, you're the only one I really trust Ray, the only one I could trust not to try and stop me from doing what I need to do. This is hard enough without the arguing, and the long goodbyes. I picked you because I needed some of your strength, some of your resolve to do this."
Ray nodded, reaching out and taking Steve's hand. This time the squeeze did hurt a bit, but he grit his teeth, and said nothing. The two men fought over the bill, ridiculous under the circumstances, and left the restaurant in separate vehicles. The last thing Steve said to Ray was, "Tell the others I love them." Ray was quite certain he would never see Steve again.
Screaming through the atmospheric barrier, Steve burst free from the earth's gravitational pull. He had taken a deep breath right before the air got too thin. Most people thought that he didn’t need to breath. It wasn't that he didn't need to breath, he did. But he could hold his breath for days, perhaps weeks, he'd never really bothered to find out how long for sure. Now he was gliding through the frictionless atmosphere of space, towards the hurtling rock, that even to his telescopic vision looked so tiny in the distance. In several days he would make contact.

For three days he hadn’t slept. Or if he had, he was unaware of it. It was easy for the mind to wander, in the timeless, empty, ocean of stars in which he sailed. It was difficult to tell dreams from daydreams, or from reality for that matter. But once, for just a moment he had seen his mother and father pushing him on the swing set. The one his father had built with strong, calloused hands, while the days swept by, sun sailing in the sky, the light of it caught in the gray hairs that still clung to the temples of the man’s otherwise bald head. And it made him ache, the thought of never seeing them again. He’d stood in their doorway for hours the night before he left, unable to breach the threshold, unable to tell them what needed to be said, terrified that the look in their eyes would turn him into a coward, rob him of the courage he needed to go into the cold empty void of space and do what needed to be done. In the end, he managed to cross that threshold, and sternly, tersely give them the report of where he was going and what he had to do. They were remarkably understanding. His mother asked, just once if there was any other way. He shook his head, saying nothing because he could feel the tremble in his chest, that would make his voice waver if he said the words, spoke the thoughts that were rambling through his mind. They each hugged him, and shared a tearful goodbye. They both told him how proud they were of him and said goodbye to him in their own hopeful way. Every word lanced through his nigh impervious, titanium-hard skin and pierced his heart, but he owed them at least this much, he owed them much more but it was too late now to give it to them. With that he’d walked away from the only home he’d ever known, or at least the only one he could remember. And now… now he was sailing through emptiness, towards oblivion.

On the fourth day it seemed that he slept, perhaps for all of the day, and dreamed of that same red bike and that same green hill and he couldn’t for the life of him remember if he’d ever owned a bike, or if there was a hill near his house. And what was the sound of that dog barking in the distance, was it his dog, or someone else’s or a memory, or a dream or a dream of a memory from someone else’s childhood, like the children on the shows that he’d watched on TV when he was growing up. He shook his head, mind addled, for a moment. He could not at all remember what he was doing or why, and then he remembered, and it was like the first time he realized what he had to do, all over again, and some part of him wanted to cry. But he was too far away from himself to touch his true feelings. Watching himself, drift through the void from a thousand miles away. And more than that, he had a job to do, there would be time enough for tears and whatever else may come after…

He awoke drifting and angry. He was angry that he hadn’t come upon the damn rock yet, and angry that it had to be him to do this task, because no one else was strong enough. He was angry that he’d so rarely known a woman’s embrace, because there were perhaps two women on earth that he could hold in his arms without fear of crushing them. One of them was a sociopath he’d done battle with many times, and the other was a fellow hero, and sometimes teammate who from time to time would accept him into her bed and into her loveless mechanical embrace. The two had nothing in common, except for the all encompassing limitations that come with almost limitless power they both posessed. They had worked out a routine by the third time that allowed them both to do what they needed to do as quickly as possible then go back to saving the world. But there was an emptiness to it that made him long for real lust, and true love. That made him angry, and so did everything about the emptiness around him, the rock, the earth filled with people who seemed at times to scarcely notice all he gave to protect them, and worse, sometimes died despite his best efforts.
And then there came over him a great calm. He sailed onwards, towards his inexorable collision with destiny. Perhaps it was the very reason for his creation, the very reason for his arrival on earth, but it didn’t matter. It was the path he had chosen and soon he would know the result of that choice. And the calm stayed with him, it carried him and he felt that he had overcome the trials of the journey. He felt that it was all downhill from here.
And then the great stone grew, and grew, and grew. And he was near enough to it that the illusion of acceleration grew greater and greater and was almost beyond the abilities of his dulled senses to process and the stone loomed larger in his vision by the second, grew nearer and nearer, and for the first time in all the years of his life since the most nascent days of his childhood, Steve’s eyes grew wide with a strange mixture of fear and wonder.

When he finally collided with the stone behemoth, it was almost a relief. The size of the meteor was incredible. It could not be shattered, and would not be moved. Steve redoubled his efforts and felt the thrust of his flight, surging against the meteor's terrible weight and impetus. Steve, the man, was caught between the crush of these two mickle forces. He grit his teeth and pressed harder, dug deeper. Then he felt something deep inside of him crack, and the stone bore down on him. In the silence of space he cried out to his mother. Not his earth mother, as he would have expected, but his real mother, whose gentle hands he suddenly remembered. Gasping for air in the void which had none to offer, he fell back from the great stone behemoth, praying to whatever god would listen, that he'd managed enough of an impact to knock the meteor off its course.

He should have died in that heroic moment, but he didn't. He drifted back towards the earth whose people had no knowledge of his great sacrifice. He drifted, half alive towards the blue sphere until gravity took hold and he fell burning to the earth. His almost unbreakable body crashed to earth, sending shockwaves through the city which the nightly news would equate to 5.7 on the richter scale earthquake. His prone, barely breathing form, was discovered in the chaos that ensued, and he was loaded into an ambulance by fourteen men. The ambulance rushed him to the Hurst hospital, the back of the vehicle sagging beneath his weight.

In a dreamlike state, he opened his eyes and saw the doctor that stood before him apologetically, and informed him he was going to die. He rattled off a series of injuries which Steve had sustained, none of which meant anything to him. The doctor explained, that surgery was the only way to save him, and that there was no blade in the hospital sharp, or strong enough to cut him open, and that even if there was, there was no replacement part that they could put in him strong enough to withstand the rigors of his own muscular contractions.
And that was how he passed from this world, a victim of his own uniqueness, and completely alone.
Friends and family arrived at the hospital as quickly as they heard, but by that time he was gone. Even the fastest man on earth, the blue bolt was not there to say goodbye, in fact, no one had seen him for days.
The world mourned the passing of its greatest hero. And the meteor sailed harmlessly by.
And once in a while, someone would wonder aloud at the local newspaper, whatever happened to Steven Taylor, the quiet reporter who used to write freelance for the paper in his spare time? Most people thought about it for a while, taking their time before remembering the man’s face, and then they would say, “wow, you know, come to think of it, I haven’t heard from him for years.”

Raymond Wright, also known as the gray owl, never went to the hospital, nor visited the hero’s gravesite. In fact shortly after the death of the world’s mightiest man, he retired as a masked crimefighter and was never heard from again. Few if any noted the timing, nor believed there was any correlation. The two’s relationship was often described by outsiders to be one of professional courtesy at best.

Surprisingly crime did not run as rampant in the years that followed as many feared it would. The remaining heroes banded together to pick up the slack, and life carried on. Those that knew the world’s greatest hero best shook their heads at the bitter irony. The hero, the man, had always wondered if what he did really made a difference, he’d always hoped that everything he sacrificed for his city, his country and his planet, had made the world a better place.