Some things can never be explained or even vaguely understood.
The universe keeps its secrets.
—Excerpt from Doctrine of the Stars, one of the greatest of all philo-scientific treatises
It had been unlike any other day in his life.
This evening Billy felt different as he sat in his office, removed from the time and place he once thought he occupied, detached from all he had known before, and connected to something else entirely, something so strange that he could hardly put it into words. He felt cold energy stirring around inside, traveling back and forth through his arteries and cellular structures, causing his heart to beat faster and his breath to come in short gasps. He tried to calm himself, then heard a familiar rapping pattern at the door.
Taking a moment, Billy called out permission to enter. Starbot strode in, making hardly a sound with his mechanical body, followed by Dr. Rachel Ginsberg. She caught Billy’s gaze immediately as she entered, looked startled and came to a dead stop just inside the door. Starbot must have told her something when he gave her Billy’s order to come. But whatever he told her, it was apparently not enough, because she just stared at him with an expression of shock and fear, upon seeing his glistening silver eyes.
For a moment, Billy didn’t know if she would continue toward him or flee. He tried to soften his steely gaze, and said in the most calm voice he could muster, “I’m sorry if I am not entirely presentable, my good friend, but as you can see, I have experienced something highly unusual. An affliction of sorts, so I thought I should consult a doctor.”
She smiled, but couldn’t conceal her nervousness as she took a tentative step toward him, then another, and another. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“All things considered, you mean?”
“Of course. All things considered. Are you in any pain?” Rachel touched his forehead. “You feel quite cold.”
He became aware of the creatures going faster inside, flitting this way and that, making him even colder. Apparently they didn’t like anyone touching him.
“Something alien has entered my body.” Billy placed an open hand on his chest. “It is inside here and everywhere, many tiny creatures, I think, but they form a collective entity.”
The doctor put an instrument over his heart, listened to the wireless signal from the device, then placed it on his lungs as he breathed. “From a cardiovascular standpoint you seem agitated,” she said. “And why are you so cold?”
“You’d be agitated, too, if you’d been invaded by aliens and your eyes had turned silver.”
She frowned. “I suppose I would.”
“And as for the coldness, I don’t know why. It started when they surged into my body, like something that had come from far away, bringing a piece of deep space with them.”
She was taking his temperature now, with another instrument placed against his temple. “Seventy-one point three degrees,” she said. “Impossible. You should be dead.”
“But I’m not, am I?”
Rachel brought out an eye chart, propped it up on a table across the room. After a few minutes of her questions and his responses, she looked at him and said, “Your eyesight is perfectly normal, twenty-twenty. None of the slight far-sightedness you had before. No short-sightedness, either.” She performed additional tests, and finally said, “You have no astigmatism, glaucoma, or any other problem I can determine—except both of your eyes are gleaming silver, with no differentiation between pupil and cornea—and you’re as cold as a corpse.”
Billy nodded. “It’s beyond known medicine, then.” He motioned with one hand. “You can go now. Thank you.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“I don’t know. I think so, but I can’t be sure, can I?”
“Isn’t there something more I can do for you?”
He smiled thinly, said in a mocking tone, “Do you have a special pill for this sort of thing? Or an injection? How about a healing patch?”
Dr. Ginsberg backed toward the door, appeared to be near tears.
“I’m sorry,” Billy said. “You didn’t deserve that. I know you’re trying to be helpful, but I think you’ve done all you can, all anyone can.”
Rachel nodded and left, followed by Starbot. Just before the robot shut the door, Billy heard her let out a sob in the corridor, as if he had died.