by Jill Smith
He has to see Dr. Hwong at the NRCSE biomedical facility again. The doctor puts a cold metal circle on Imms’s skin to listen to Imms’s heart. The metal circle is connected by a tube to the doctor’s ears. Dr. Hwong did this during the first examination, too, but this time, he waits for Imms’s heart to drift to different places in his body, and he listens to the heart in each place. He takes X-rays—big black and white pictures—of Imms’s body. He puts them on a screen that makes them glow. He speaks to B, not Imms.
“I’d like to do an MRI.”
Imms doesn’t know what an MRI is, but looking at the way B frowns, he knows he doesn’t want one. Three pockets in the doctor’s coat. Two screws in his glasses.
“More sophisticated X-rays as well,” Dr. Hwong continues. “CT scans.”
“Ask him,” B says.
The doctor glances at Imms, then back at B. His voice gets too low for Imms to hear him. Whatever he says makes B mad. B shakes his head, turns to Imms.
“Get dressed. We can go now.”
They go to Mary and Bridique’s that night. Mary shows Imms how to prepare the yogurt dressing for the fruit salad. Over dinner, Bridique describes peoples’ reactions when the news broke that humanlike creatures had been discovered on the Silver Planet.
“People were happy?” Imms asks.
“People freaked the fuck out. The conspiracy theorists, the doomsayers. The fucking vegans, convinced we were going to enslave your race and like, farm you... Did you ever wonder if there was life on other planets? Life that looked like Silvers?”
Imms shakes his head. “We knew there were other worlds. But we didn’t want them.”
“How did you know they existed?”
“Numbers,” Imms says. “There’s never just one of anything.”
“I would argue there’s never two of anything. Everything is unique, right? No two stones are the same. No two people—or Silvers—or worms, or planets.”
Imms shrugs. “On Earth, there are all kinds of different creatures, and they look and behave differently from one another. But they want mostly the same things. You’re not so different from B, or Mary. Or from a big cat.”
“Am I different from you?”
Imms focuses on his potatoes. “I don’t think so.” He wonders if he is wrong about that. Even nonhuman creatures on Earth are capable of anger, violence, and jealousy. Imms has seen animals on TV fighting over meals, killing each other to claim territory. Humans and Silvers are similar in intelligence, B says. But how smart can you be when you’re missing so many feelings? Maybe Brid doesn’t want to be compared to Imms, who is so limited in his ability to experience emotion.
But Bridique just asks, “Do Silvers believe in God? Or gods?”
“Not the way humans do.”
Bridique turns to B. “This is the kind of stuff people want to know. NRCSE won’t give us anything except press conference bullshit about how they’re proud to welcome a Silver to Earth. People want to hear from Imms.”
“We think it’s best if Imms stays out of the spotlight.”
“We, or you?”
“We,” B says.
“Right, because then people will just forget he’s here.”
“NRCSE agrees he needs some semblance of a normal life.”
“Why don’t you do an interview? You’ll have to now, won’t you? Now that they’re giving you the Golden Fuel Tank for bravery or whatever.” Brid puts a forkful of corn in her mouth. “Isn’t it something? You get a medal, when Imms is the one who saved your ass.”
B shrugs. “Guess so.”
Bridique serves herself more corn. “Have you talked to their families?”
“Families?”
“Joele’s? Vir’s? Gumm’s?”
“Why the hell would I?”
“I just asked.”
“I don’t know them, they don’t know me. Why would I talk to them?”
“Imms, honey, you mixed this dressing just right,” Mary says, taking a bite of fruit salad.
Imms tries to eat what’s on his plate so that he won’t waste. But B’s quick, hard movements beside him are distracting. B swipes his mouth with a napkin and stares at Brid. “I did try to save them.”
“I know. I was kidding.”
“It’s not something to joke about. I don’t want to give a goddamn interview. And Imms shouldn’t have to parade in front of the media.”
“That’s fine,” Brid says. “But people need more information than NRCSE’s giving.”
Mary sets her fork down. “Why can’t we just accept what is? Why can’t we be glad that Imms is here and that B is home safe?”
“Because I’m curious,” Brid says.
“Be curious some other time. Not during dinner.”
Bridique points at B with her spoon, then at Imms. “Does NRCSE know you’re banging him?”
“Enough,” Mary says.
B won’t say anything, but heat pours from him.
“I’m excused,” Brid says, getting up. She leaves the kitchen.
B gets up, too. Imms thinks he might follow Brid, but he goes to the sink and rinses his dish.
Mary gives Imms’s knee a gentle squeeze under the table.
Imms thinks that if someone were to take his picture with a camera right now and put it on the news instead of that drawing, everyone would see that he is not a hero. That he will never rescue anybody.
Chapter Nineteen
On the local news tonight is a story about people who dressed as Imms for Halloween. Children and adults painted their skin silver and some used contact lenses to distort their eyes. One boy put a flashlight underneath his jacket to simulate a drifting, glowing heart.
“Look, B,” Imms says as B passes through the living room.
B stops to watch the montage of trick-or-treating Silver imposters. “Don’t let all this attention go to your head.”
“Go to my head?”
“Don’t let it make you think you’re better than you are.” He tugs a hank of Imms’s hair.
“Ow, I won’t.”
B kisses him behind the ear.
Elise Fischer interviews Michael Huffman, the boy who put the flashlight under his jacket. “That was a very cool effect,” Elise says.
“It worked pretty good.” Michael rubs his nose. “Except I ran out of batteries after, like, an hour.”
“What made you decide to dress as the Silver for Halloween?”
“I dunno. I just thought it’d be cool. I knew a lot of people were gonna be doing it, so I tried to make my costume extra good. The Silver’s kind of mysterious, you know? Like a superhero.”
“Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.” Elise turns to the audience. “The Silver Imms inspiring a number of Halloween costumes this year. Coming up, it’s available in eight yummy flavors, but what’ll it do to your kids’ teeth? A sticky Halloween treat that’s better left in the bag…”
*
NRCSuckers love to apply the word “adaptable” to Imms. They are amazed by how quickly his lungs learned to breathe Earth’s air, how effortlessly his digestive system adjusted to human food. He told them about the Cosmic Granola Bars on the Byzantine, and they laughed. They want to know how he became fluent in English in so little time, having never known of the existence of other languages before humans arrived on his planet. Imms isn’t sure he picks the best way to describe it, but he tells them that when the humans came, he felt ready. Like he had empty places inside of him that didn’t even know to feel empty until he saw what he was missing.
He doesn’t usually mind going to NRCSE. Sometimes he feels uneasy being away from B, but other times it’s nice, the break, the different people. He hates seeing the doctor, but B is always with him then.
The psychologist at NRCSE has a colleague from Sicily who has started coming in once a week to teach Imms Italian. The NRCSuckers want to study how he learns. They have asked him to try to teach them the Silver language, but it is difficult, because the Silver language doesn’t
have words for a lot of what exists or happens on Earth. Also, the NRCSuckers are even worse at the language than Grena and Vir were. He doesn’t get to see Grena, and he hates that.
One day the NRCSuckers take him to a part of the building he’s never been to before, a huge room with lights all across the ceiling. Most of the room is taken up by a rectangle of water with only a frame of ground to stand on. The water is bright blue, not clear like most human water. There are thick black lines running through it, and ropes dividing it lengthwise into five strips. The NRCSuckers call it a swimming pool.
Imms loves the tests they do that day. He stays at the bottom of the pool for as long as he can without coming up for air. He swims back and forth across the pool as many times as he can until he gets tired. A NRCSucker attaches a device to his chest and has him go underwater again and stay there until he has to come up to breathe. The black lines, he discovers, are not part of the water but are painted onto the floor of the pool, which is smooth, unlike the bottom of a lake. A NRCSucker named Violet Cranbrim is impressed by his ability to hold his breath for so long and offers him the peach she brought for lunch. He declines because sometimes it’s good manners to refuse things you want when they are offered.
Every time he goes to NRCSE, he swims in the pool. Occasionally the NRCSuckers have him pull heavy weights through the water. They start taking him to a small room full of metal machines and have him lift weights with different parts of his body. They encourage him to follow a special diet. They want to see if his muscles are as adaptable as the rest of him. He is supposed to put a powder in his drinks, take vitamins, and eat more fish. One day they ask him to run as fast as he can around an indoor track. The man timing him whistles as Imms completes the lap. Then all the NRCSuckers except Violet Cranbrim huddle together to talk. Violet stays with Imms. She smiles at him and says, “You’re really fast.”
Soon Imms is going to NRCSE three days a week. Monday and Wednesday are swimming and weights. Thursday is meeting with the psychology team and Italian lessons.
“You spend enough time at that place, you might as well live there,” B says. He gives a half-smile, like he means it as a joke, but his voice and eyes are too dark for joking.
“I don’t want to live there,” Imms says immediately.
“Well, they didn’t exactly have to apply thumbscrews to get you there three days a week.”
“What’re thumbscrews?”
B tells him, and Imms wants to go throw up his powdery drink.
Exercising while humans watch him feels strange—lonely. Except swimming. When he’s swimming, he can disappear underwater. He doesn’t have to see or hear humans. He can watch the black lines at the bottom of the pool, and the way the light comes through the water. The NRCSuckers take his pulse. They watch his heart. They feel his arms and legs, poke his chest and belly. They seem surprised, confused.
“Humans’ bodies change depending on diet and exercise,” Violet explains. “Their muscles get stronger the more they work out.”
Imms already knows this. B has big muscles that he got from using machines and running in circles. “Mine don’t,” Imms says. He looks at his arms, which are still long and thin, and remind Imms of the dull gray pipes that go across the ceiling of B’s basement. He’s only been in the basement once and hated it.
“Exactly,” Violet nods. “We’re trying to figure out why. You’re strong. You just don’t look it.”
*
That night Imms wakes with his heart circling his stomach. His head pounds, and he feels both thrilled and afraid. He lies in bed for a moment, confused about why he’s here when just seconds ago he was in a huge white room in the basement of NRCSE. He sits up, shaking. The NRCSuckers had said the only way he could travel was strapped to the table. This idea frightens him a lot, but it will be worth it. He just has to get back to the room.
“B,” he whispers, shaking the sleeping form.
“Hmnn?”
“B, wake up.”
“What?” B opens his eyes and looks at the clock. It is 3:06. Imms just checked.
“How did we get back here?”
“Back here?” B’s eyes drift shut again.
“We were at NRCSE, and they showed us that room…”
B yawns. “What are you on about, pardner?”
“The room,” Imms says. “You were there. They have a secret room, with a ship—not as big as the Byzantine—and it can go to the Silver Planet quickly, and then it can come back. The NRCSuckers said if I went, I had to travel strapped to the table. But they said you could stay with me. I was trying to tell them yes. You shouldn’t have brought me back here. I wanted to go.” Imms voice rises.
B grinds the heel of his hand against his eyes. “You had a dream.”
“What? No.”
He has to make B understand. He knows all about dreams, though he’s never had one himself. Sidewalks turn into snakes, and people fly or breathe underwater or forget to wear pants to work. Dreams can be silly or terrifying or beautiful, but they are all lies.
What happened before Imms arrived back here in the bedroom was real. Imms can still smell NRCSE’s sterile halls. He can see the faces of the NRCSuckers who showed them the ship. And B was there, brusque, doubtful, and none too thrilled about returning to the Silver Planet but willing to accompany Imms. “So what do you say, Imms?” one of the NRCSuckers had asked. For just a second, he’d been too afraid to reply, imagining being strapped to the table again. But he reminded himself it would only be for a few minutes, and he’d been just about to say yes, when…
B nestles against the pillow and smiles. “You can dream. You’re a real boy, Pinocchio.”
“It wasn’t a dream. I don’t know how we got here, but we need to get back there and tell them yes, we want to go. I know you don’t like my planet. And I won’t stay there, I promise. I just want to see it again. Just one more time?”
“Imms.” B is awake now. “I know it seemed real. But it was a dream.”
“No.” Imms shuts his eyes. Maybe he’ll pass out again and wake up back in NRCSE’s underground room. He doesn’t care if B comes with him. He just needs to go, quickly, to the Silver Planet, just to see it. Then he’ll come back to Earth.
“Come here.” B tries to pull him nearer, but Imms resists. “I know it’s confusing.”
“I know what dreams are! They’re lies. This was real, I know—”
“They can seem very real,” B says. “Sometimes more real than life. Believe me.”
“I want you to believe me.”
“I believe that it seemed real to you at the time.”
Imms’s eyes sting, feeling like fists are behind them, pounding to get out. He gets out of bed and looks around the room for any sign he’s been away. He’s naked. His clothes from yesterday are in the hamper where he left them. His shoes are—
His shoes. He always sets them neatly side by side in the closet. Now one is upside down, and the toe of the other rests on the exposed sole.
“My shoes!” he says triumphantly.
“Come on back to bed.”
“My shoes aren’t put away right.”
“I threw mine in there before we went to bed. They probably knocked yours out of line. That’s all.”
“Do you not want me to go?” Imms asks. “Is that why you’re pretending it wasn’t real?” Though Imms hopes this isn’t the case, he understands why B might try to trick him.
B sighs. “Do I want you to go back to the Silver Planet? No. But that doesn’t mean I’d hold you back, if you could pop over for a visit. But there isn’t. No ship can take you there in seconds, Imms.”
“I saw it.”
“You were dreaming. It’s three a.m., and I have to be at work in a few hours. Let’s go back to sleep.”
“I know what I saw.”
“Fine. We went to NRCSE in the middle of the night, where they unveiled a miraculous spaceship that’ll go from here to the Silver Planet in a heartbeat. But I didn’t want you t
o go, so I knocked you out, dragged you back here, threw your shoes into the closet, and pretended the whole thing never happened. Sorry about that.” B flops back down and shuts his eyes.
Imms grabs some clothes, slips his shoes on, and leaves the room. He goes downstairs and dresses in the living room. He’ll go to NRCSE by himself. B can’t stop him. He’ll find the room, find the NRCSuckers who… Already he can’t remember their faces. Can’t remember what they said. The whole scene is fading, becoming smoke, drifting away from him. He remembers going to bed last night, but he doesn’t remember waking up to visit NRCSE. He was just—there, suddenly. What did he and B talk about on the way to the facility? Which halls did they travel to get to the secret room underground? Why did the underground room have windows at the top, letting in sunlight?
“Don’t go,” he whispers to the memory, as pieces of it drift away.
He sits on the arm of the sofa. The place, that secret room, feels far away. It’s flat, half-formed, uncolored. All that remains immediate is his terror when he was told he’d have to travel strapped to the table. His desperate hope that Joele wouldn’t be on the ship, wouldn’t find him.
But Joele is dead. She couldn’t be on the ship.
So why was the possibility of her so real in that room?
Because it was a dream.
He’s wanted to dream for a long time, but now that he has, he hopes he never does again. It is too cruel, the tricks the mind plays when it slips out for the night.
His throat tightens.
A creak on the stairs. Footsteps crossing the room. B sits on the couch beside him.
“You were right,” Imms says hoarsely. “I was dreaming.”
It takes B a moment to answer. Imms listens to B’s nails scratch skin—probably his arm. Imms has memorized the sounds of different movements against different patches of skin. Has counted all of B’s moles and freckles and scars.
And what does B memorize of Imms? The number of times Imms keeps him from sleep or work or the privacy of his own thoughts by being foolish, by not-knowing? The endless list of things B must explain to Imms, or watch Imms fail to understand?
