couch.
âWhatâ,â Harv had time to say.
In the meantime the charge, exploding in the confined space of the loaded bore, brought its full force to bear on the only movable object.
The ball had been sitting for over two hundred years, waiting for just this event. The patch had dried, of course, and so didnât provide the lubrication required for a proper shot, but it didnât matter. With so much pressureâsuddenly coming close to eleven thousand pounds per square inchâsomething had to give and it was the ball.
It left the bore, traveling at a speed of just over twelve hundred feet per second. The front of the ball was pitted by age but that only slowed it slightly and on a longer shot would have made it inaccurate. That did not matter because after traveling only seven feet the ball hit the edge of the window frame in back of the tree, clipping so close to the window itself that it broke the glass in a jagged spider-web pattern as it left the house.
Striking the glass and frame deformed the ball. Had it run true it would have streaked across the space between Harvâs house and the next oneâwhere Richard livedâand buried itself in the wall, coming to rest in a two-by-four stud holding the window frame in back of Richardâs tree in place.
But being misshaped caused the ball to curve to the side as it flew, hitting almost four inches to the right of the two-by-four, in the glass of the window itself.
The glass moved it a quarter of an inch still more to the right. It clipped through the Christmas tree, cutting four small limbs, grazed the back of Richardâs hand as he reached up into the tree to straighten the ornament and struck him in the forehead one inch over his right eye.
The ball had lost some velocity coming through the windows and across the space between the houses but it was still moving at over a thousand feet per second when it hit Richardâfaster than bullets leave the barrel of almost all pistolsâand it passed through the skull easily, carrying bits of bone with it, destroying the brain almost completely before it passed out the back of his head and finally stopped in the wall next to the door.
All voluntary and involuntary action for Richard ceased instantly. His breathing stopped, his heart stopped after two beats, his brain waves stopped and all his thoughts went blankâhe was effectively dead and his world ended by the time his body dropped to the floor next to the tree.
The entire time lapsed from the spark entering the touchhole of the rifle to Richard dropping dead to the floor was 1.43 seconds, so that Harv still stood, his wifeâs mouth was still open, his childrenâs eyes were still wide, Richardâs parents still sat at the kitchen table, bits of glass were still falling from the broken windows, and Richard was dead, all in less than one and one-half seconds.
And these are the things Richard missed that were in his timeline before it intersected the timeline of the rifle: twenty-one thousand nine hundred sunrises and sunsets, three thousand one hundred twenty-seven movies, nine hundred forty-three baseball games, one hundred fourteen walks with girls on moonlit nights, nine thousand days with warm sun beating down on his back, and swimming, hiking, seeing art in museums, watching puppies play, winning a bike race in spite of an injury, graduating from high school at the top of his class, being in the army, graduating from college, getting married in final and true love, graduating from medical school as a specialist in research on cardiac-related diseases wherein he would have found a genetic cure for heart disease, having children and watching them grow to have children so he could watch
them
grow, and at last, finally, at seventy-four, becoming ill and dying quietly in his sleepâand all of this, every moment of every day of this, was gone forever with the rifle ball entering his head.
Ended.
The Rifle
It was
âWhatâ,â Harv had time to say.
In the meantime the charge, exploding in the confined space of the loaded bore, brought its full force to bear on the only movable object.
The ball had been sitting for over two hundred years, waiting for just this event. The patch had dried, of course, and so didnât provide the lubrication required for a proper shot, but it didnât matter. With so much pressureâsuddenly coming close to eleven thousand pounds per square inchâsomething had to give and it was the ball.
It left the bore, traveling at a speed of just over twelve hundred feet per second. The front of the ball was pitted by age but that only slowed it slightly and on a longer shot would have made it inaccurate. That did not matter because after traveling only seven feet the ball hit the edge of the window frame in back of the tree, clipping so close to the window itself that it broke the glass in a jagged spider-web pattern as it left the house.
Striking the glass and frame deformed the ball. Had it run true it would have streaked across the space between Harvâs house and the next oneâwhere Richard livedâand buried itself in the wall, coming to rest in a two-by-four stud holding the window frame in back of Richardâs tree in place.
But being misshaped caused the ball to curve to the side as it flew, hitting almost four inches to the right of the two-by-four, in the glass of the window itself.
The glass moved it a quarter of an inch still more to the right. It clipped through the Christmas tree, cutting four small limbs, grazed the back of Richardâs hand as he reached up into the tree to straighten the ornament and struck him in the forehead one inch over his right eye.
The ball had lost some velocity coming through the windows and across the space between the houses but it was still moving at over a thousand feet per second when it hit Richardâfaster than bullets leave the barrel of almost all pistolsâand it passed through the skull easily, carrying bits of bone with it, destroying the brain almost completely before it passed out the back of his head and finally stopped in the wall next to the door.
All voluntary and involuntary action for Richard ceased instantly. His breathing stopped, his heart stopped after two beats, his brain waves stopped and all his thoughts went blankâhe was effectively dead and his world ended by the time his body dropped to the floor next to the tree.
The entire time lapsed from the spark entering the touchhole of the rifle to Richard dropping dead to the floor was 1.43 seconds, so that Harv still stood, his wifeâs mouth was still open, his childrenâs eyes were still wide, Richardâs parents still sat at the kitchen table, bits of glass were still falling from the broken windows, and Richard was dead, all in less than one and one-half seconds.
And these are the things Richard missed that were in his timeline before it intersected the timeline of the rifle: twenty-one thousand nine hundred sunrises and sunsets, three thousand one hundred twenty-seven movies, nine hundred forty-three baseball games, one hundred fourteen walks with girls on moonlit nights, nine thousand days with warm sun beating down on his back, and swimming, hiking, seeing art in museums, watching puppies play, winning a bike race in spite of an injury, graduating from high school at the top of his class, being in the army, graduating from college, getting married in final and true love, graduating from medical school as a specialist in research on cardiac-related diseases wherein he would have found a genetic cure for heart disease, having children and watching them grow to have children so he could watch
them
grow, and at last, finally, at seventy-four, becoming ill and dying quietly in his sleepâand all of this, every moment of every day of this, was gone forever with the rifle ball entering his head.
Ended.
The Rifle
It was
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