We were vacationing in a summer lodge at the end of the season. the forest was drying out, the creek slowed to a trickle. i think i saw an eagle. Nikki and I headed back to the main building; all the cabins were closed now, and the staff and visitors ate dinner together in the main building. Tonight was spaghetti and garlic bread. The chef and owner of the lodge, Jim, was an older heavy-set black man in his fifties. his spongy beard was full of patches of gray, puffy cheeks and a second chin. "Well. Look What The Cat Dragged In." Jim had a way of enunciating every word. I felt good about his place. There were a some arcade machines in a nook by a coin operated washing machine and a gumball dispenser, with one of those "felix the cat" clocks with the wagging tail and eyes that look back and forth. I felt around in my pocket for some change. Nikki rescued me from my plight with a whole dollar's worth of quarters. I was ready for some action. The game was loosely based on the aliens saga, or terminator 2, or something. there was a big hulking beetle-like thing which grumbled occasionally at you. the goal was to shoot it in the eye with any weapon you had. the controls were hard to figure out, two joysticks and a light gun mounted in the cabinet. i died twice before i even figured out how to run around. squished by the giant's hammer. Heading to bed, us visitors were all crammed into one big room. we shared a bed, me and Nikki. then there was an older woman in her forties, and a younger woman. we stayed up all night playing card games, and talking about the past. I was still talking to the older woman when I noticed everyone had gone to bed. I still wasn't tired so I took a jaunt out around the yard to look at the stars. A cat's head peeked out of the grass. It looked like it was playing dead, and for a second i wondered if it was a whole cat or just the head. then it moved suddenly, the older woman was quietly closing the door behind her. "hi." she whispered, wincing slightly. "can't sleep eh?" "i wanted to go pick up some ice cream for my daughter's birthday tomorrow, she's turning fourteen" "she's your daughter? fourteen? really. i guess i have this brain malfunction where i can't tell how old people are, or maybe it's just evolutionarily adaptive for me not to think about how i'm too old for someone or.." she was looking at me pointedly. i guess i was rambling. we took her car to the gas station down the road, prowling the aisles of glowing refrigerators. victory came to us in a winged cardboard cylinder. its flavor was vanilla. we did it down by the creek in the moonlight. she, bent over a log. an animal thing, nothing much. time slipped and it's morning. jim was out back of the house, splitting logs. except on closer inspection, it wasn't logs. he was chopping pieces off what appeared to be a futuristic machine gun, wrapped in a sleek sort of painted styrofoam form one would find on an antelope decoy. he was really happy about it, singing as he went. he called me over to take a look, but before i could KABOOOOmmmmm klunk chucka chucka ka ka ka ... echoes of the explosion bounced around the hills. cheering in the distance. a party of men showed up eventually, decked out in paramilitary gear. "hey there jim. we got that rifleman on the hill with the torpedo." they each had one of those machine guns with the foam casing, and i realized what the sled thing was behind the house. it wasn't a flight simulator, it was a cruise missile in a loading frame. what the hell was going on here? was it a game? those looked like real guns. we all sat down for breakfast on the redwood deck, orange juice and toast splayed everywhere. hopefully i'd get some answers out of them. a flock of silent helicopters glided overhead, gleaming in the morning sun. everyone stopped eating to watch them pass. murmurs of "there's something you don't see every day", "i'll say", "you betcha." they just kept coming, waves of gleaming metal birds, rotors whipping around in slow motion. and then, they were gone. and it was still perfectly silent, except for the tink of silverware and munching of toast. next, a small flurry of micro UAVs hovered inquisitively over the brunch. they were so close you could see the irises of their cameras. there were all kinds, quadcopters, bicopters, gyrocopters, all white plastic aerodynamics. i reached up to touch a little one and brushed its invisible flexible rotors. the loud buzzing collision with my hand sent it scurrying back to mama, a white salad bowl stuffed full of gleaming lenses which then descended to look disapprovingly at me. i reached up and grabbed it by the rim. haha! now what, you overgrown helmet. its wings were buzzing and flapping against the table cloth. the rest of the flurry had taken off for safer skies, and the rotorcraft gave up. it lolled to one side on the table, stretching out a landing pod, trying to right itself. but i had cleverly wedged a flower vase against it in order to keep it there. I got out my camera to document the catch. it really was something, a marvel of secret military technological development. what could be inside? the leathery vinyl wings pulled back into the shell as i poked at it. cool! let's see it do that again. i gathered everyone around the dead bot to show them. setting the camera to video mode, macro, here we go. except, now it wasn't a bot anymore, it was shifting, changing. now it was a sky blue binder full of mail. i opened the binder. manila envelopes, tyvek, and other bits of paper. some of the mail was marked "royal air mail" - was great britain involved now too? the binder started hissing, bubbling, cracks forming in the plastic. jim came over and started poking at the bubbles. "um, i don't think you should do that. it's mad at us." but he disregarded me and kept poking. then his finger started to melt into the casting, turning odd colors at the end, sky blue and black. then blood, boiling everywhere like a hot lasagna. he was screaming. the hand was gone, a frothing stringy stump was all that remained. the arm started frothing, but more slowly. what do i do? i turned off the camera. "med kit. anyone? you, military guys, do something! shit!" jim bellowed and howled in pain, bent over on his knees, crazed eyes looking one way and then the other. "Do. Not Be Afraid." he wheezed religiously. "For It will Re-create us in a More Perfect Form." Nikki and I carried him into the house to a sofa. and we gathered around the dining room table again. to discuss the situation. the arm was slick and dark, but solid. what remained of jim's left hand waggled limply from the wrist of a new hand, a thin, black, african hand. a child's hand. he seemed to have stabilized, and was snoring peacefully. i should have been recording, because what happened next was incredible. a seam formed, going down the chin and under his sweater. then the face split open, a new gleaming young black face underneath. he was dark, with full cheek bones and intensely white eyes. it looked up at me like a newborn snake. "There, there, there. What a good day. Oh a good day it is, it is." it hissed with glee. "I know, what you must be going through is hard. Jim, if you're still in there, I feel for you. It's one thing to want to be a new person, and something else entirely to actually go through it." I tried to comfort him, but the thing was staring at me, its eyes regarding me like a piece of meat. the person-shaped thing stood up and addressed me, the little grabby hands clutching at mine feebly. "I do not feel we have been acquainted." it had a british accent. Its eyes looked into mine. Sagging gray sweat pants barely held onto the slim frame. I glanced over at nikki, still sitting at the table, her mouth open in shock. "Now comes the psychedelic part." I nodded, indicating we would go outside to talk. But the grabby little hands, were holding onto my wrists. they wouldn't let go. the limp skin of the old hands remained, dangling off the new wrist like a rotten latex glove. i peeled it off and threw it on the floor. it smelled bad.