After a slight pause, the leader spread all four of its arms and said, “We did consider those options, but we do not believe either would lead to success. We cannot do what we need you to do. We have already tried and failed. We do not know of anyone else with your unique qualifications. And, time is increasingly precious.”
“What exactly is it that you want me to do?”
“Locate James Peterson and return him to us.”
I stood up without realizing I was going to do so. Eight disk-filled hands tilted and followed my movement. I felt the rush of emotions as my sadness and anger fought, then went cold as the anger took over completely. “I can save you idiots a lot of work. Jim’s dead. He’s been dead for a month. It was all over the news, the first execution in North Carolina in over three years.”
“No. He is not. We . . . intervened and repaired him.”
“That’s crap. I read the stories on the execution, and the coroner pronounced him dead on the spot.”
“Yes, by your standards, for a short time he was dead. Our medical facilities are much more advanced than yours, however, and we were able to repair him before he suffered any permanent neural damage. After we restored him, he was . . . working for us. But now he has escaped.”
I didn’t want to listen to any more. I had not particularly wanted the state to execute Jim. If anyone was to going to kill him, I should have done it, but I had had that chance and had chosen to let it go. The state’s killing him would not bring him back to what he had been, and it sure wouldn’t bring Louise back. In the end, though, I had made peace with the execution; he had brought it on himself. I didn’t need my own special representatives from the first confirmed alien visitors to Earth coming into my gym and picking at that wound. “If you really did steal Jim’s body and bring him back to life, he’s your problem. I’ve been done with him since they arrested him five years ago. I’m going to shower. Get the hell out of my gym.”
I turned and headed for the showers. A current like the shock from a wall outlet passed through my whole body, and as I passed out I heard the buzzing.
* * *
I met Jim the summer before ninth grade, in those uncomfortable months when we were stuck between schools, between the friends we had known and the ones we hoped to meet, between the old hat of middle school and the new adventure of upper school. I had always loved watching basketball but had never been any good at it, and I had always been too afraid of failing to be willing to pursue it. On the first Monday morning of that summer vacation I promised myself I would try basketball in earnest, and I walked the half mile to the nearby community center, where I knew pickup games were always available for those brave enough to join them.
The Woodlawn community center was a large old yellow stucco building that housed a surprisingly well-equipped weight room, a torn-up pool table, a trampoline, and one real wood-floored basketball court. The air conditioning couldn’t keep up with the combination of the summer heat and the energy of all the kids in the place, but it did at least manage to make the inside temperature stay well below that of the St. Pete summer outside. The basketball court was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, the wood worn smooth by years of running feet, the glass backboards freshly marked for the summer season, the nets still white. It was also a place I could not play, because you had to either bring your own five players to queue up for a chance at the current winners on the court or be on a summer-league team scheduled to play on it.
Fortunately, a row of six concrete outdoor courts stood right next to the building. Each was full-sized and had a buffer of about ten feet between it and the next court. A few trees at one end of the row provided a little bit of shade from the sun; the best players not already indoors competed on the court nearest to those trees. The worse you were, the farther you played from those trees.