The man is in a hotel room, drunk for the first time with the woman, Jessica, who had him invited to NM to meet some of her artists friends that were in an art show in the city of Albuquerque. The two stopped to rest at a hotel just outside of Albuquerque and Jessica had given him wine that he drank for the first time. The man, now drunk, created the alien Jessica showed him she’d painted years ago when she still had aspirations of selling her work professionally, and Jessica sits on the bed beside the man in utter shock to see her creation standing before them.
“I don’t know what kind of wine this is but I’m seeing things,” Jessica says as she stands from the bed and makes her way to the alien creature that looks something like a walrus and a human mashed together; it has arms and stands on two legs, but the arms come to flippers at the end and his skin is dark and slick. Huge tusks extend from his mouth and he wears clothes and spectacles that make him look distinguished.
As Jessica approaches, the alien does not move and the man is still very happy with himself to see her so blown away by his creation.
“I probably shouldn’t have done it,” the man says when he remembers his vow to keep his preternatural ability to bring things from his imagination to life, “but your face is classic.” The man eyes Jessica from the bed. He wants her the way the old man, Randy, his old boss from the auto shop in Amarillo where he’d worked, had taken so many women in his office while the man worked there. He wants to touch Jessica’s skin and slide her clothes to the floor. Jessica is still slowly circling her alien and every now and then she touches it, revealing it for the life-like dummy that it is; the man hadn’t created it to be animated or to talk.
The alien eventually disappears and Jessica looks to the man. “What do you mean?” She says.
“What?” The man asks like they are playing a game.
“You said you shouldn’t have done it.”
“Yea, I can make stuff, I think about it, I make it. I made the alien, you made it, I just made you one for real. It only lasts for a little bit though.” The man finds himself being more open and honest about himself than ever as he details his childhood entertaining his family and occasionally helping his friends and neighbors when he could maintain anonymity.
“How though? Are you a mutant or something? An angel?” Jessica asks as she drinks wine directly from the bottle. It is very early in the morning and the sunlight is just beginning to change the darkness through the window.
“Nah, I’m just a man. My mama said I’m just special.”
“But if she thinks you’re special, why did she make you hide yourself. Why aren’t you helping people?”
“Help people?” The man laughs loudly. “You know what me helping people looks like? You wana know why I left Amarillo? Cause my boss was doin’ every female customer of a certain age and when it finally came time for him to get what was coming to him for sexing up other people’s wives and breaking hearts, I stepped in and saved his butt like he deserved it. Just because I could and if I didn’t I would feel bad later. But he deserved it.” The man thinks that most people must be that way; completely full of blame and worthy of punishment but saved by others too ashamed to walk away and let the chips fall where they should. “And it gets worse, when I was in TN trying to help people I only got in the way. That’s what they got police and firefighters for, I’m neither one of those things.”
Jessica can see that the man has contemplated his ability long and hard and it had been difficult for him. She pours more wine for the man and the two sit on the bed enjoying the man’s creations until they both fall asleep.
They both wake in the late afternoon. The man’s head is pounding and Jessica explains the mechanics of a hangover.
“So how much of last night was real and how much was the wine?” Jessica asks and the man assures her with a tiny creation of himself being hit in the head with a bat by a wine bottle with arms.
“That’s what I feel like,” he groans.
“My friends are going to love you,” Jessica says and hands him medicine for his headache.
“No,” the man says earnestly. “You really can’t say anything, and if you do I’ll deny it. No one can know.”
“Because your mama said so? You’re a grown man now, you make your own decisions. And what you got is amazing, you could do so much.”
“What if I don’t want to?” The man is getting angry. The pounding in his head intensifies and Jessica leaves him alone with the lights off to let the medicine take effect.
Hours later, the two drive into Albuquerque. The man’s headache has not subsided and despite his efforts to sleep it off, it seems that it only gets worse. When they arrive at the home of Jessica’s friend Arnold, the man does his best to ignore the pain and make a good first impression.
“I’ve heard a lot about you. Good to meet you,” Arnold offers. They sit in his living room that is not air conditioned but a box fans blows in the living room window and circulates the air.
The three talk and the man struggles to pay attention to Arnold who explains that both he and his wife are painters. “She’s in the back doing finishing touches then we’re gonna head over to the gallery to start setting up.”
Jessica forces the man to hydrate when she notices that he is still in pain. “We had a boozy night,” she explains to Arnold.
The man drinks plenty of water in Arnold’s kitchen standing at the window above the sink. He wishes that he can enjoy Albuquerque but he fears that the heat is only making his head pound harder and harder. And before he can fill his glass to drink again, the man loses consciousness and falls to the floor; the shattering of his glass brings Jessica and Arnold running from the living room. Jessica shrieks to see the man convulsing violently, only the whites of his eyes showing, and he seems to be speaking in a language that neither Jessica nor Arnold have ever heard before.
Before either of them can call for help, the man stops still and his eyes close. He says, “successful reboot,” then he slowly opens his eyes and sits up to see Jessica and Arnold with looks of shock on their faces.
The man says, “My headache’s gone,” then asks “Why am I on the floor?”
Far away in the state of GA, behind a false wall in a closet, inside of an office located in the basement of the Institute for Brain Function, a tiny blue light starts to blink on and off and emits a high pitched sound that not even dogs on the planet Earth can hear. But the doctor who occupies the office can hear it and he knows what it is.
The doctor is puzzled and makes his way into the closet and past the clean white shirts he keeps there in case of a coffee spill. He slowly closes his hand into a tight fist and when he opens it, the skin of his palm opens down the middle and the doctor removes the skin like a glove, revealing two long fingers and an opposable thumb with a talon-like nail that were curled inside of the fake hand that he wore like a mitten. The doctor places his two fingers against the false wall and then finds a sort of key hole with the talon of his thumb. He slowly removes the wall to reveal the gadget that is blinking and sounding an alarm. It is the beacon; it was designed to help him locate gadgets that he may have misplaced. But, the doctor counts the things in his hidden closet, everything is accounted for. He lifts the beacon to decipher its message. When he reads what it says, he pockets the beacon, replaces the false wall and his hand of five fingers. He rushes to his phone.
“This is Eakran, I have to duck out early. Something urgent has just presented itself.” Eakran eyes the coordinates on the beacon. “A family matter, I have to go to NM for a couple of days.”
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