Eric Stever - Non Metallic

I heard Jaime scuffling across the street, and I turned around to watch him come towards me. One of the trucks from the mine was grumbling and grunting down the street, but he didn’t seem to notice it. The truck should have started slowing down, but it didn’t, even though Jaime was in the crosswalk and had right-of-way.

I gave a sort of half yell, because I was pretty sure he wouldn’t get hit, but that only made Jaime stop in the street and turn to look behind him, like I was joking.

The truck kept coming, and I yelled again, this time a real one. Jaime must have seen in my face that I wasn’t kidding because he sort of squinted his eyes, like he was trying to figure something out. He used to do that when I would beat him in Monopoly, or Battleship, or Checkers. Like he couldn’t believe it had happened.

His head snapped to the right, and the smile of the old Jaime faded away, leaving only the cold smooth face of a stranger. With a jerk, his body shot across the street, but not before the grill of the truck slammed into his right leg. He spun around, falling to the ground with a cry.

I screamed and yelled at the driver, and he smiled and waved at me, like nothing had happened. The truck moved down the street, toward the grocery where my neighbor, Mrs. Garnet, was trying to cross, and it came to a squealing stop. The driver waved impatiently at her, and she scurried across the street, bags in hand.

I ran over to Jaime. He was hunched over his leg, his back all twisted, bent in the wrong places. He rocked back and forth, humming to himself, talking in some strange language.

I put my arms around him, but there was nothing I could do. Jaime lifted up the leg of his pants, and I could see the tiny little bugs squirming around his skin, eating the blood away, straightening the leg, bit by bit.

“Stupid,” Jaime gasped. “My own fault.” He grinned at me, and I could see blood on his teeth. But there were swarms of bugs even there, clacking away, cleaning him.

I tried to push away, afraid the bugs would come to me, get inside me too. “You can’t die,” I whispered. But I didn’t know if the words meant I hoped he would live, or that I was afraid for him, afraid he never could die.

Then, Jaime’s arms were around me, holding me. I looked into his face and I saw the old Jaime. But the other one, the smooth faced one, was still in his eyes, waiting.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. His breath didn’t smell bad like it did before he left. He twisted his body toward me, and I could see he could move his back now, just a little. “I left my… We have things that make it so you can’t see us. To make it easier on you.” He grinned again, like he’d just forgotten to lock the back door, instead of ending up a heap of jumbled bones on the pavement. “I left mine on.”

I shook my head, not understanding. I was afraid to touch him, but when I hugged him back, I didn’t feel the bugs, the little metal lice crawling on his skin. He was just Jaime again.

“But I can see you,” I said. “I see you now and I saw you get hit…”

Jaime laughed nervously. “The brain sees, not the eyes,” he said. “You know me, that’s why you can see me.” He laughed again, but the notes were off-key.

I hugged him tight, my right arm around his neck, feeling the metal they had put there when he got his adaptation. I hugged him tight like I used to when I got scared or hurt, and just for a second, he was my big brother again.

“The truck hit you, and those bugs—” I said, the words tumbling out. Then I got quiet—ashamed.

“We’re trying to make things as normal for you as we can,” Jaime said, his voice was steady now, not all wavery like mine was. “But the trucks and the mine and copper to China… that’s just pretend, no one needs that anymore. Things are different now, people are different. We’ve transcended—” he paused. “We finally grew up.”

The sun peeked out of the snow clouds, reflecting gold off of the old slumped store windows. I was shivering, but I could tell that Jaime wasn’t even cold, he didn’t even need his jacket. I didn’t let go of him because I knew that when I did, I would always miss him. When I let him go, he’d never be my big brother again.

“Everything’s so hard now,” I said, and then maybe I cried a little. Just a few tears, but I didn’t know what for. “I don’t want to work in the mine. Or hang out at the Owl Club. I don’t want—”

“I could make it better,” Jaime whispered, “I could take you with me, back to Las Vegas. The surgery doesn’t even hurt—”

“No,” I said, trying to push away from him. But his grasp was strong, stronger than it ought to have been.

“I’ll show you wonders,” Jaime said, and he gave me his old smile, the daring one he had used that time we stole Uncle John’s fireworks.

Jaime placed something round and cold in my hand, and told me to relax. I struggled against him, trying to open my hand, but his grip was iron. I felt a shock run up my arm, and then, just like he had promised, I could see.

The sky was full of glistening metal orbs, some that hovered above us, some that moved too quickly for my eyes to follow. An orb just above my head fastened its black round eyes on me, zoomed in closer, then darted away, taking off into the sky. Another scampered on thin metal legs into the post office, following an old man like his pet dog.

One of the old ladies who sang in church walked right past a group of blank-faced men with metal jutting from their necks, all three dressed in some sort of brightly colored cloth that shifted patterns as the wind blew. A triad of open-adaptations, but even scarier than I had imagined; metal monsters with the faces of men.

They floated above the ground, standing stiff and unmoving on wafer thin platforms. Only their eyes seemed alive. One of them moved his platform to within inches of the woman’s face, sniffing at her like he was trying to smell her perfume. But, if she noticed, she gave no sign, and merely continued into the store, to buy whatever canned vegetables were on sale.

In the distance I could see the truck moving past the edge of town, the metal orbs flitting around it, like flies on a carcass. The truck came to a turnabout, one I hadn’t seen before, and stopped. The driver got out, and another moved into his place, emerging from a tunnel jutting from the ground just behind the old billboard that was hand-painted to read, “Jesus Saves”.

“Your truck drivers,” Jaime said softly in my ear. “They think they’ve been driving a full shift.”

I looked around Ruby Hill. On every corner, in every store, the silent strangers stood, some hovering, some waving their strange machines over the people from our town. The townspeople were oblivious to it as they talked and laughed in line at the grocery store, as they checked their mail at the post office. But the strangers were there, so close we could touch them.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to see anything. “No more,” I said. “Jaime, no more. They’re spying on us. Why did you let them spy on us?”

“Not me,” he whispered, “I’ve only just started. Some people have been Adapted for a decade.” I could tell from his voice, he was excited. “A decade! Their brains are hundreds of years developed in… computational terms. Each year they integrate, create better connections, and then jump even farther ahead.” He smiled at me. “Their minds are beyond our horizons. Who knows why they choose to visit Ruby Hill.”

He took the egg from my hand, and I opened my eyes. Ruby Hill was normal again.

“But you let them,” I said, blinking away tears. “This is your town.”

“I told you,” Jaime said, “we’ve transcended this. Ruby Hill is a museum to them now, there’s no life here.”