A brief encounter in a park many years ago is plaguing a man, and continues to plague him, due to a brain injury suffered in the meantime. Reed uses this to explore the relationship between the man and son, whose visits to the health care facility revisit the same issues due to the father’s memory loss.
The story is set some decades hence, and as with Megan Lindholm’s previous story, has the world, and the US, in economic and climate trouble. It’s a fairly bleak set up, what with brain injury, bereavement, rape, HIV, climate change, and economic disaster, but the story, a good one, manages to end on a positive note.
If you click on the ‘Filed under Robert Reed’ tag above, you’ll see that there are 139 stories by Reed I’ve read and reviewed, which has him by far and away the most reviewed author on Best SF.
