Eric Stever - Non Metallic

Jim nodded, but did not share in the laugh. “Just now, all of a sudden— I had to.” His hand traced a line through the spilled beer on the table.

“It’s about the Snoops,” Jim said.

“They making another run at us then. So what if they are? We can handle it.”

Jim shook his head, and continued playing in the stale puddle. “They left us. I mean they just took off and disappeared. Nobody knows what to think.”

“Nobody knows? What about the Scanners, what do they say?”

“The dreams stopped coming,” Jim said. “Just like that, no dreams, no drawings, no strange words popping into their heads. Nothing.”

“So the Scanners here are drawing a blank, so what? That’s happened before.”

“Listen man,” Jim said. “It’s not just here, it’s everywhere. I got my— I got the damn man upstairs just about running me into the ground doing analysis. We got nothing.”

“So they’re gone.” Leo licked his lips. “Shit man. I don’t know what to say. That’s awesome, right?”

“Does it feel awesome to you Leo?”

Leo shook his head. “Maybe they’re on a hiatus or something.”

“You know what it means,” Jim said, taking a sip of his coffee. “They’ve decided. That’s all we can guess. The other Coordinators have run it through too, and that’s what they’re coming up with. A decision has been made. But they can’t tell me which way the damn coin flipped.”

“Maybe it stood on its edge. Maybe it was a draw, and we get left alone.”

“Or maybe they come back and raze the whole place to the ground.”

“We could fight them though, right?” Leo asked. “I mean, if we could turn everyone On, we could take them out.”

“Maybe we could. But it takes time, you know. We only have 100,000 people who can do it now. How are we gonna train everyone else? And how are we gonna get the rest of the world to accept what we’ve been doing to them?”

“You mean dumbing down the world?” Leo said.

“I mean distracting them, yes. Half the time I expected the reports to come back showing the Snoops preparing for war. How could they believe what they were seeing? The mental decline on Earth in the last 40 years?”

“Shit man, who knows what a Snoop thinks? Who’s even seen a Snoop ship? We only know about them because of the Scanners, and we only understand because of the Coordinators. And bastards like me, well we just make sure everyone stays real peaceful. Real lazy.” Leo adjusted his cap again. Another message, he thought. Goddamn them.

Jim lowered his voice. “But what if they can tell? What if the Snoops found out we’ve been hiding from them? Distracting humanity so people don’t turn On spontaneously… what if that was wrong, what if we crippled ourselves?”

Leo shrugged. “It’s not like we decided it, Jim. You and I bought into the system, yeah, but we didn’t freakin’ invent it. It’s just… the hand we were dealt.”

Jim was quiet for a moment. “When’s the last time you were On?” he asked.

Leo rubbed his nose and looked over Jim’s shoulder. “Who knows.”

“You know, and you dodge that question whenever I ask you it. That’s meaningful.”

“To which one of you?”

“To us, Leo. To all of us really. Jesus, I know you’re goddamn conflicted right now, but can’t we talk about it some other time. The Uncles have kept us around for this long.”

“You think I don’t know that, man? That I was supposed to be dead by now?”

“We’d all be dead by now without them,” Jim said.

“I’d be dead for sure, I don’t know about everybody else. My damn liver should have given out 10 years ago. I can tell. I don’t know how, but I can tell.” Leo shook his head, disgusted, then continued, “Everybody else, they might have made it through. You don’t know for sure. The Scanners and the Coordinators, they talk about the damn Snoops like they’re the Devil himself. But they help some worlds too. They don’t destroy every one they find.”

“That’s not exactly reasonable,” Jim said.

Leo fumed, but said nothing. He tapped once on the table, then became enraged at his own gesture. Another message, he wondered, or his own impatience?

“Are they really gone?” Jim asked, more for himself than Leo. “Or have they found out about us?”

Leo remained silent.

“But the Coordinators found out something else,” Jim said. “Our distractions don’t just affect humans. The Snoops were affected by it too. We could use that— to defend ourselves.”

Leo smirked. “So I’m spreading stupidity throughout the universe, instead of just on our lonely old planet. Fantastic.”

“Leo, I don’t want to… I need you to turn On. It’s important.”

“That’s my decision,” Leo said. “That’s the setup we all agreed to. I decide when it happens.” He felt the familiar constriction in his chest, the whitening of his vision. His Uncle was surging forward now, and Leo doubted he had the strength to stop it. But why now? Why had it hid from him for the last week?

“I think there’s a reason for your getting drunk,” Jim said. “I think you’re just hiding from it dude.”

“I won’t,” Leo said. “It’s too big man. It freaks me out, all right? It’s not me anymore. I get lost in the wash.”

“But it’s still you Leo, we’re not taking your mind away. It’s all you in there. This is just a different version of you. A bigger version.”

“The extended version?” Leo smiled. “The double-album?”

“Your paintings man,” Jim said. “We need to know more about your paintings. We need to understand them.”

“You think I don’t know about my own paintings?”

“Where do they come from Leo, did you ever ask yourself that. Where do those damn paintings get their start?”

“From me,” Leo said. “I make them up, I paint them.”

“What did you do before you came here?” Jim asked.

Leo shook his head. “Lot’s of people start late—”

“Answer the question. What did you do?”

“I worked at a college,” Leo answered.

“You weren’t a professor,” Jim said. “What did you do?”

“I was on the grounds crew,” Leo said, staring out the door. “I picked up… garbage. I drove a truck and picked up all of their garbage.”

“Were you a painter then?” Jim’s eyes bore into Leo’s.

Leo looked away. “Goddamn it, you know I wasn’t. I was just a drunk, same as now.”

“You’re holding us back Leo. We need to know about your damn paintings man. If you could tell us about them, then I wouldn’t be doing this. But you don’t know shit about them, no more than those tourists do. Tell me about the kid in the painting Leo. Why was he there?”

“He was the same, like I said. The same as the monkey.”

“Keep going man,” Jim prodded him. “We already knew that.”

“I don’t know, maybe I didn’t get it right. He was supposed to hold something, the kid I mean. But I couldn’t decide what it was.”

Jim sighed. “Was it a gun, a rocket, what? Jesus, we need to know what he was holding.”

Leo felt a lightning strike of pain in his chest. His vision blurred. “I feel strange,” he said.

“Your Uncle wants to come On,” Jim whispered. “He has something to tell me; something you just can’t know. Please Leo, it’s important. Just let it happen.”

“Just let it happen,” Leo said. “Whispered in backseats throughout the world, always the same result. Even here.”

“That’s it, you gotta go loose man. Try not to think.”

“You could have at least bought me dinner first,” Leo smiled.

Leo passed through his Uncle, saw him rise up and take control. What Leo saw in his Uncle was not the usual solemn enlightenment, but something else, a new emotion. The familiar smile was replaced by a superior smirk, one Leo used when hustling tourists. The Uncle’s eyes had a glint of greed that Leo sometimes saw in himself late at night; an unspoken urge that usually led him first to the bar, and sometimes the brothels.