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"The End of Summer" is a 12,000-word story by Algis Budrys, about a man who is 10,000 years old. The story was first published in the November, 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

Kay is returning home to Manhattan after a lengthy stay in Europe, followed by a cross-country drive. Kay is over 10,000 years old, but the world is only sparsely inhabited. It seems that 10,000 years earlier, babies stopped getting born, but at about the same time, scientists discovered how to rejuvenate human bodies, making people virtually immortal. The cost of this immortality is amnesia. People store their memories electronically, redownloading them periodically, but often editing out unpleasant or unnecessary memories. On his drive home, Kay accidentally hit and killed a dog, upsetting the ‘boy’ (probably ancient himself) who owned the dog. Kay promised to find the boy another dog, but neither the boy nor his father believed him, and Kay continued on his drive. Robots do all of the work in this society, and by the time Kay arrived in Manhattan, the robots had his old apartment out of mothballs and ready for him. Kay does some investigating into why their society is like it is, but does not get very far. He spends several months breeding a new dog for the boy, and then takes it to the boy. The father, however, had edited out any memory of the dog, and refuses to accept this dog from a stranger. Kay simply leaves the dog in the neighborhood for the boy to find. Returning home, Kay decides to stop taking the treatment for immortality, which means that he will die in a few decades.

Additional Notes

This story has been reprinted in, among other places, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 16 (1954).

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