BOB

The Camp is an ideal place for secrets but no place for privacy or security. I stow it somewhere safe I can remember. That makes things both simpler and more complex.

But they were coming, and I had no other options. The Nine had taken all that away.

This world has never welcomed my kind, but although its purpose is to protect the Dwellers from us, the Camps offer us a refuge from their contempt and cruelty.

I ask the one the Dwellers call “Cyclops” after some historical figure or mythical being. This is their way of putting us into a context they can comprehend and drawing a firm line between humanity and that which dwells beyond. The one-eyed creature blinks, then seems surprised and then disappointed I hadn’t vanished in the brief darkness.

“Next week, they told me. Everything will be gone.”

“And where are we to go?”

“Home.” The eye again closes, and it is clear this time he expects me to disappear.

**

Her name is Kate, and she seems exceptional among Dwellers. Perhaps an empath, perhaps a watcher, perhaps a functionary. She brings us food and liquids.

“Tell me,” she says, folding her limbs to rest beside me. I eat, I drink under the warm terrestrial sun, and I tell her of Home. Kate does not appear to grasp all of it, and that is my responsibility, because speaking of Home brings me peace and a comfort that make me abandon Dweller context.

“It sounds truly beautiful,” Kate says. “I bet you miss it.”

“I’ll return,” I assure her. “Someday.”

Kate’s concept of time and mine differ, and the Dwellers’, as well.

**

When we arrived, from different worlds, the Dwellers met us with compassion, with generosity and an eye toward our welfare and safety. But fear, too, greeted us, and anger. We soon learned to avoid the marketplaces, where we had no earthly currency to trade at any rate, and more and more, they cast harsh light into the corners, the periphery, wherever we seek to hide from view or consideration. We are allowed to leave The Camp, but as strangers in a strange world, we learn by nightfall to return to the safety of the motley collective.

Even then, our worlds are foreign to one other, and we must protect what we have gathered. I have been repeatedly reminded of this, and I have naught except that which I have hidden away. 

And that’s why, now, I must find BOB.

**

“BOB,” Cyclops repeats, the single eye focused somewhere between my pair. “That’s what you need. Bug-out bag – BOB, get it? They’ll come for us, and you gotta be ready to blow out of Dodge ASAP.”

This place is Millington, Illinois, but I understand. And so I gather. I’m fortunate to find a storage case discarded behind the “thrift store” next to The Camp, and into it I stuff my Earthly accumulation. I fear being unprepared for my return Home, and I must find a secret place, a safe and accessible place I can remember. When everything is foreign, everything becomes the same. It’s true in the Dwellers’ perspective on us and in our view of their world.

He's a Dweller, but he has shown me past kindness. Much time has passed, however, by either his or my standards, and he allows me into his dwelling only with great reluctance and a wary look up and down his street. We do not belong there. I had pulled up the hood of the soft jacket Kate had given me with Cool Ranch Doritos and apple drink in a box and zipped the larger coat supplied by the church behind the camp all the way for the long walk to the small house. The case clatters along on the broken streets, but I’m given few looks.

“Where’d you come by that?” he asks, pointing to the case. It is soft, is mounted on wheels, and there is a handle that expands and retracts with the push of a button. It is “Samsonite.” His face is tired. “You steal it or something?”

“I found it. Near the Camp. It’s quite useful.”

“Your whole life in one carry-on, huh? Never mind. I made some supper, meatloaf. It oughtta be finished about now. You want some?”

I do not – it has an unpleasant smell that carries throughout the house. But I appear eager, because I need his absence. “I would.”

He simply nods, and is gone. I have been to the room below, at the bottom of the stairs next to this “living room.” I gather up my BOB case, carefully activate the stair light, and move as quietly as possible to the underground floor. There is space behind the stairs filled with his belongings – things of obviously significant value but of no functional use. They are coated with dust; I slip the “carry-on” behind a large green suitcase, and return to the room above.

The food is hot and better than I had remembered, and we eat more of the unpleasant meat loaf than I desired so we would not talk. He asks if there is anything I need, and when I say no, he gives me currency. It is of little value – the merchants refuse us – but I understand it is a kindness.

He doesn’t ask if I might like to be driven back to The Camp, which is best because he will not notice notice the absence of BOB.

** 

This is well before The Nine’s decree. I can’t say how long. Dweller time is a vague concept for me, for us, though I’m conscious Kate has stopped bringing us food and drink. Others come to the Camp, but they have no interest in my world, little interest but to press the Dweller’s God on us.

I present my sleeping bag to Cyclops, but he rejects it. “It’s keep awake, keep moving, or get arrested. In which case, I’ll be set for a few nights at least. Won’t you need that thing where you’re going? Where is that, anyway?”

“Home.”

I simply leave it behind, because I know another will claim it as the cold night falls. I leave as I came, by necessity with nothing but dread. There are angry Dwellers at the edge of the Camp, and I pass through the mob unnoticed, unburdened save the hoodie cinched about my skull.

I have all I need, all that is expected of me.  

**

The Earth organism called the salmon can return to the precise freshwater habitat where it was born to reproduce, after spending years in the ocean. I sense BOB, sense the small house as a salmon.

The Nine have altered my timetable – our timetable, and I can’t risk what’s ahead if they find me. Even so, the disruptions at the Camp have drawn new attention to us, and I move along head down past the shops and restaurant, the fueling station where I generally find a higher degree of kindness when I’ve accumulated enough currency for hot food or a bag that might sustain me for two or three days. I cross the wide Main Street at the Kroger store, which is bustling with Dwellers who’ve finished with their duties for the day and will soon be Home. A few turn toward me, more than one with a menacing or fearful expression, but without words. A few in the street look threatening at me before turning the corner nearly on my heels, one cursing me with a raised finger.

It's now near. Memory floods my brain, and my pace quickens as I reach “Poplar Street.” There is a tall plant that shadows the corner where I turn. It is a maple. The “library” near the Camp, where we were once welcome, taught me many things, and indigenous species and their features are a more useful reference point in navigating the Dweller’s world. The Dwellers do not like us viewing their Homes. I have never found a poplar tree on Poplar Street. I do not ask why that might be.

I once told Kate about BOB, where I kept it for safekeeping. “Bug out,” Kate says, is a term of war that refers to retreating from violence or confrontation, but non-combatants now use a BOB to prepare for natural disasters or “civil unrest.” The concept of war and civil unrest both seem as counterproductive to a species or planet’s advancement, but the human is a species of far greater diversity than ours, and conditioned to fear and dominate or obliterate dissimilar varieties or strains. Kate says I am “clever” for using what she called a “mnemonic device” for remembering where I have hidden BOB. I have not told others, either Dwellers or those at the Camp.

He does not like seeing me, and is angry when he learns I plan to go Home. He asks me to stay, to wait until “this all blows over.” I explain that The Nine’s decree is final, and that Millington and so many others like it has awaited this authority. They hope we will simply go “Home,” disappear, perish. It is no difference which. He now sounds like the other Dwellers.

“You think only of yourself,” he says. “What will you tell them?”

“I’ve explained why I must come Home. They understand and agree.”

He looks about as if all might vanish in an instant. “You can stay here. I have the space. You can’t just go.”

“That won’t work, and you understand why. I will say nothing except that you need more time. Now, I left something here – you wouldn’t have understood, and I couldn’t trust you to care for it. Let me pass, and I’ll leave. I’ll protect your secret, your wishes. I wish you a good life.”

I do not know how or why he had it – I suspect the “how” is the “pawn shop” on Main Street where contraband goods are freely traded, and I suspect the “why” is me.

“Let me pass. If you use that, you’ll only draw notice. There will be questions.”

It is an explosion. He is propelled backward, and I see an expression of horror on his face before his skull makes contact with the wooden floor.

He will recover, or he will not, and in that case, the problem – his problem – will be resolved. I seek BOB in the darkness below.

But he has anticipated me.

**

“He’s been this way for years,” he tells the policeman, slumped deeply in the couch cushions, hands cradling his abused but intact skull. “You deal with these guys – you must know what I’m talking about. It was building since we were teens. I think he probably had some severe learning disability, but back then, they weren’t as good at screening for those things. Matt was like scary smart, very fast on his feet, was curious about everything, but he couldn’t make the grades. On top of that, he couldn’t hide the smarts, and it was blood in the water for the other kids.”

The policeman nods. After the paramedics check him out, he repurposes the facts and circumstances to reposition himself as the victim. And isn’t he, really? The gun’s gone when the law arrives – neighbors here piss themselves at the sound of a garbage truck belching, and the middle-aged detective looks sympathetic, though there’s something unreadable in his weary, heard-it-all expression.

“No, never could hold a job, and he washed out of community college and even a gig at Arby’s. Mom and Dad died, it like untethered him. What do they say? A lot of folks like him just want to retreat from reality, right?”

“Well, want…” the policeman smiled. “So, what’s the story with this?” He prods the battered wheeled carry-on with a cheap loafer, and pokes through the contents. “Water, check. Doritos, Cool Ranch, check. One jar garden variety, you’ll pardon the pun. One Gatorade bottle filled with dead bugs, various varieties. Grass, leaves, candy wrappers… Et cetera, ad infinitum. I understand the got-damned Supreme Court thing must’ve had him panicked, desperate – don’t know what the hell we expect these folks to do – but if this is a go-bag, it’s the most, ah, unusual example I ever seen.”

“Look, Detective Mead,” he leans in. “I didn’t want to tell you – I’m embarrassed, for him, you understand? You know how some guys think they’re Ben Franklin or Albert Einstein or Tupac or are convinced the NSA is bugging their fillings or the plate they got in Iraq? Well, Matt got it into his head he was an alien. You know, an extraterrestrial, ET, whatever. His social worker, Kate Reiser, you can call her I think at the County Building, she says it’s like a psychological defense, a coping mechanism, some bullshit like that. It kills me to say, but I think he just finally snapped. I mean,” he gestures toward the raw wound in the wall next to the Samsung, toward the portable garbage bag.

“You think he’ll come back?”

He pretends to consider. “I really don’t think so. He was pissed when I told him I’d thrown the bag away, but he coulda killed me then, right. My brother was desperate – please don’t hurt him.”

“And why did you keep it? The bag?”

It takes a beat, but he looks up. “He’s my brother. Guess I just wanted something to remember him, even if it’s not him anymore. Or maybe never was. I’m really beat – we good, Detective?”

“Sure, Mr.—”

“Robert. Please”

**

I sense presence, and consider the possibility of violence. “He” cannot rationally be angry for my choice in leaving him to his fate, but he has been on this world far longer than most, living a Dweller existence and assimilating into the Dweller world. While the comforts of Dwelling are enticing -- as many have remained as have returned Home since the beginning – the inability to assimilate inherent in my assignment has liberated me from painful choices. If he is returning with me, then he has no need of the weapon I removed and destroyed.

It is right. There is no violence in his presence. There will be questions, and the risk of discovery. I cannot stay. It is right.

They will find Robert one day – a neighbor, authorities. Robert has no proximate or relevant blood genetics remaining in this world, and another Dweller will occupy his space soon enough. I will simply cease to exist, leaving no Earthly void. I expect Cyclops already has winked me away, and “my” body – discarded at the bottom of the water a short space from where we stage in near-absolute darkness – may never be found. It is vital our research be flawless and our exit clean, especially as now when we will not return. At least within Human’s window.

Sentience is a species’ death sentence – that has proven out in any mission ever undertaken. Sentient species are a crucial component in Homeforming, controlling and culling threatening and competing species and inhospitable ecosystems, establishing protocols and standards for organized existence, and, ultimately, creating ideal conditions to bring about their own extinction. Sentience is the enemy of natural instinct and survival, and this species like the fruit of the Earth organism called “avocado” begins to decay relative seconds after ripening. A species that consumes all and then dementedly devours its own has taken sentience as far as is functionally possible. This world will soon survive Humans and persist in a far more manageable and habitable form.

We will be back.

It won’t be long.

We fold into the night.