Uch and Vra zeeped ahead of human 329 multiple times without capturing it. It parked the
two-wheeled machine in the same place they
had seen rows of them early in the day. Many of
the humans had already left their wheeled
instruments there, replaced their helmets with
brimmed caps, changed the coverings on their
feet, and had run away. Moments after human
329 arrived it did the same. “We need to follow
it,” Vra said. “We should wear hats to blend in.”
A moment later they wore green and yellow caps
with ‘John Deere’ stitched on them.
Again they zeeped ahead of number 329 several times, only to watch it run or walk by along
with dozens of other humans. Zogor urged Uch
and Vra to capture it. “Maybe when it’s dark or
after it stops,” Uch said.
As daylight turned to dusk, Uch and Vra saw
number 329 pass in front of a crowd of humans
where they had first found them early in the
morning. A voice through a loudspeaker said,
“You are an Ironman,” in spite of what the magnetometer indicated. Human 329 had a wide
smile as it slowly walked to a large tent and
entered.
“It’s stopping. Get ready to zeep it when it
comes out,” Uch said.
•
•
•
•
•
•
From the moment Elliot had landed on Hawaii,
he knew he’d savor every moment of the Ironman
triathlon no matter how well he did. He vowed to
smile through the race. He emerged from his
swim right on the pace he expected and jumped
on the bike. Everything was fine until that weird,
androgynous couple in mismatched Hawaiian
garb showed up repeatedly on the bike and run
course. They looked strange, as if a medical student had performed plastic surgery on them by
candlelight. Elliot couldn’t figure out how they
kept popping up without a vehicle to transport
them. A few times they tried to touch him. That’s
when he smelled their acrid body odor, like burnt
electrical wires.
Despite an odd feeling each time he passed
them, he succeeded in his race plan—swimming,
biking, running, and smiling. He put the odd
people out of his mind as he crossed the finish
line and headed to the medical tent to soak his
calves in cold water. He found a bucket of icy
water, but it was dirty from use by other triathletes. He had just carried it outside to dump it
around the side of the tent when the weird couple and their odor appeared out of nowhere. They
stared at him a few steps away as a strange,
ionic field began to engulf him. In his postIronman haze, Elliot reacted. ‘Water short-circuits electrical wires,’ he thought, and he tossed
the bucketful of cold water on them.
He immediately realized what he had done and
began to apologize, but the couple was gone. All
that remained was a soggy, crumpled pile of
Hawaiian shirts, plaid shorts, and John Deere
caps. In a moment those disappeared too, leaving just a puddle of water. The smell of burnt
wires was gone as well. He stared at the spot.
‘What just happened?’
People nearby began to point and gaze at a
rocket contrail in the twilight sky. It grew,
looped, and segmented, and for a few moments
Elliot was sure it spelled out his number, ‘329’.
Then it dissipated. ‘Are hallucinations the fourth
Ironman event?’ he wondered. He shook his head
and did what he had done all day—he smiled.
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