The typically dry desert wash raged bank to bank this morning. Several weeks earlier, a wildfire destroyed much of the landscape upriver, and the blackened remnants turned the roiling water surging past into a foreboding obsidian tide. As I stood on the bank watching it roll past, I wondered how long it would take to pull me under. Water overrunning the banks swirled maniacally around my boots, thrashing the sand beneath my soles and loosening it to dance with the sticks and other detritus carried along by the turbulent waves racing downstream.

My barn and horses waited on the other side, out of sight but no doubt safe beneath the run-in shed built for shade and protection from our summer monsoons. I had no way of crossing to be by their side, but it wasn’t the catastrophe it might have been since I paid well to have two cowboys on that side twenty-four hours a day.

I looked upstream one last time and did a double-take. I squinted, trying to understand what my eyes were telling me. The remnants of a partially submerged tree raced toward me with a metallic head and arm draped over the trunk. The tree shot past far too fast for me to stop it, and as it rushed downriver, the head lifted, and frightened eyes pleaded with me to help.

Now, I’m the type of woman who can’t imagine stepping on a bug or leaving an injured dove to fend for itself. But a metallic head and arm? Had I just seen an old piece of metal junk caught up in the flood and anthropomorphized the entire experience? As I watched the head receding downstream, a multi-jointed metal arm lifted out of the water and reached toward me, begging for rescue.

Without thinking, I threw myself into the muddy abyss. I instinctively rolled onto my back with my boots facing downstream to fend off any posts, pieces of cement, or trees that, at this speed, would run me through as easily as a sharpened sword through flesh. I’d done enough whitewater tubing as a kid to know that much about flood safety. As a stationary branch missed my head by inches, manic laughter bubbled up at the thought that “safety” should have crossed my mind before I jumped.

The water shot me toward the right-side embankment, and I pushed off with my boots, momentarily flying downriver headfirst. A foot-high ripple lifted my shoulders out of the water, only to drop me into the trough moments later. The next ripple crashed over my head, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure which way was up.

I panicked when several rigid tubes snatched at my hair and dragged my face out of the water. Gasping, I came up spluttering and coughing but grateful that I could drag air into my oxygen-starved lungs. I had a momentary glimpse of two wide, frightened eyes next to my face before I was once again thrust beneath the surface.

The tubes held on, giving me the horrifying feeling of having my roots ripped from my scalp a bit at a time. Panicked, I snatched at whatever was twisted in my hair, hoping to disentangle it, but it was as though finger-like joints and a hand attached to a wrist and arm were purposefully holding me in place.

And they were metal.

The latest advances in robotics had been remarkable, but I’d never heard of a robot who not only experienced fear and empathy but also had the wherewithal to pluck a human out of the water in an attempt to save them from drowning.

Does your species need to be out of the hydrogen-2oxygen atmosphere to survive?

The voice sounded in my head, and all I could think to say was, “What the—” just before I realized I was still submerged and running out of air. I thought frantically, Yes! Yes! Yes! As soon as the fingers tightened, I grabbed the hand to ease some of the pressure on my scalp. As effortlessly as lifting a stick from the ground, the metal man held my head above water so I could breathe.

I need out of the hydrogen-2oxygen atmosphere as well. We need out together. If you cannot survive, why did you jump from the solid surface into this medium?

I realized he’d released his hold on the branch to save me and that the roiling waves were flinging us about with abandon. I ignored the question and looked frantically around for something buoyant to grab onto, or better yet, something stationary we could climb on to await rescue.

We raced around a curve, and the resulting change in water pressure tore me away from his grip. Thankfully, his metal hand released my hair but managed to grab my outflung arm, which he promptly broke in two.

I screamed in agony, which had the unfortunate consequence of allowing bitter, muddy water to flood into my open mouth.

You break! Metal man’s screech of panic bounced off the insides of my head, and he immediately released me.

The force of the water tore at the two parts of my arm, and a second agonizing, mind-wrenching pain raced through me when the bone from the lower break was forced upward, piercing my flesh.

We were thrown together again, and this time, his hand grabbed me around my neck.

“No!”

It breaks too?

“Yes!”

He released my neck and grabbed me around my waist. Here?

“Yes! But not too hard.”

I saw a mesquite tree growing in the middle of the wash and yelled, “Grab that!”

Yes.

I expected him to reach out with his other arm and was shocked when he jerked his head forward and clamped his jaws around a branch the size of my lower leg. He heaved me into the tree, bashing my head against the trunk. One moment, agonizing pain ripped through me, and the next, everything went black.

The same searing pain that had rendered me unconscious brought me back to a vague awareness of my surroundings. I opened my eyes to see that the metal man had only thrown me partially out of the water. He’d wedged me into a fork in the tree, and water and detritus raged around my hips and lower back.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that although his jaws were still clamped around the branch, the water spasmodically jerked his arms and legs downstream so that he flopped up and down as the ever-changing torrents surged past.

Your circuits overloaded. Have you repaired them?

The pain muddled my brain, and the only brilliant response I could come up with was, “Huh?”

No, then. You must repair your circuits and your appendage.

I looked down and was relieved to see that at least the bone wasn’t protruding from the skin on my lower arm. The pain was making me nauseous, and without warning, I retched everything I’d eaten for breakfast.

Does that serve to repair you?

“No.”

Are you aware you are leaking a red, viscous fluid?

I assumed he meant from my arm, but when I glanced down, he stopped me.

Not from your appendage. From your frontal cranium. His eyes pointed upward toward my forehead. Just there.

I felt the side of my head, and my hand came away covered in blood. I lowered it into the water to wash the ‘red viscous fluid’ away. “Why can’t you grab the tree and pull yourself up next to me?”

My appendages no longer work. I must remove them to clean the detritus from their inner spaces. You should remove your appendage and repair it as well.

Movement along the shoreline caught my eye. I blinked several times and then decided the blow to the head had done more damage than I’d originally thought. A squirrel—well, a metal squirrel—raced past our location on his way downstream. The bushy tail reminded me of a rock squirrel, and the animal—I guess ‘robot’ would be a more appropriate description—was the size of a small house cat. I looked at the metal man and realized that with his jaws clamped around the branch, he couldn’t see the squirrel racing after him.

“Do you, um…do you know a squirrel?”

A squirrel? His wide, round eyes blinked several times. I do not know a squirrel. What is a squirrel?

“A small animal that runs on all fours but is made from the same material as you.”

Yes! You must call out. He cannot see as well as you and me!

Feeling like a fool, I yelled, “Hey!” To my surprise, the squirrel froze. One second, he was running flat out, and the next, he stood on his hind legs as still as a metal sculpture.

Did he stop?

“Yes.” The pain in my arm had quadrupled in the short time I’d been hanging, and I moaned and leaned my head against the tree’s trunk.

You must call him to us. He will repair us.

Even the air weighed heavily on my broken arm. In the desert, the air heats and becomes humid immediately before the rain falls. “How?” The distinctive sweet scent of a desert monsoon intensified. It wouldn’t be long before the skies opened up and sent another deluge to fuel the already raging river.

He will remove our appendages and—

My head jerked up. “No!”

No?

“No. Not for me, anyway. My appendages aren’t removable.”

His eyes focused on the bone nearly protruding from my skin. I think they are.

The thought had black spots dancing in front of my eyes.

Please call him. I cannot move without his help.

“Will he remove my appendages?”

He will not. He blinked several times, and I was again surprised by the emotions he could communicate with his eyes. It had to be a trick of the light because they seemed so absolutely sincere.

“Okay, what’s his name?”

Hredintouliosporous

I thought about that and then simply yelled, “Hey, Hred! Over here!”

The creature turned our way. Sure enough, he scrunched his eyes in the typical fashion of someone with uncorrected short-sightedness. His nose twitched, though, and he scurried back until he stood opposite us on the far bank.

“He’s looking at us, I think. His eyes are almost scrunched completely closed.”

Wait.

I waited and watched, wondering how the little guy would cross a raging torrent to reach us.

After five minutes of nose twitching and squinting, he turned and climbed to the top of a nearby saguaro cactus and then launched himself through the air. His arms opened just like the flying foxes I’d seen on the nature channel. A thin webbing of wings stretched from his shoulders to the tips of his super-long fingerbones and attached behind his ankles. He glided gracefully through the air and landed in the very top branches of our mesquite. The wings folded automatically when he pulled in his appendages, and he hurried down the trunk until he could scurry out onto the branch holding his friend. When I say, ‘pulled in his appendages,’ that’s exactly what happened. One moment, the claws were impossibly long, and the next, they were an appropriate size for a normal, everyday, sentient metal squirrel.

I stared at the back of the squirrel’s head. “Can you help him?”

The little guy screeched, jumped straight into the air, and turned a one-eighty to face me.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The beastie blinked myopically before slowly moving to a spot about six inches from my face. He leaned in and sniffed the blood on my head before setting one paw on my shoulder and closely examining my arm.

“That doesn’t come off, so don’t even think about it.” I snarled the words, not to frighten him but to ensure he understood my appendages differed from theirs.

Apparently, Metal Man said something inside the little guy’s head because Hred looked over his shoulder before turning and scurrying to his friend’s side.

I leaned my head against the trunk. “I must have lost my mind. I was swept into the river, and a log hit me on the head.” That sounded reasonable to me.

Lost your mind?

I refocused on the two metal creatures. “You don’t exist in my world, so you must be a figment of my imagination.”

No.

“Oh yeah? How do you know?”

Sadness and regret crept into his eyes. We were only supposed to observe, Hredintouliosporous and I. But the hydrogen-2oxygen caught my foot and pulled me away. I saw you and didn’t want to cease. His eyes brightened. But I didn’t contact you! That will be important during the review. You left the solid surface on your own. To help me?

“Yes.”

Even though you think I don’t exist? His eyes moved back and forth rapidly for about ten seconds, and I wondered whether I’d broken him.

Meanwhile, the squirrel wrapped his tail around Metal Man’s upper arm and heaved it out of the water. It lay motionless across the branch, and Hred leaned down until his nose was right up against the first finger joint. He used one of his claws to undo what looked like several screws. These he put into his mouth, tucking them into deep cheek pouches, apparently for safekeeping. He took hold of the finger with one of his hind feet, which was more of a hand than a foot. Kind of reminded me of a monkey that way.

When the finger came loose, he held it upside down and drained it of water. That done, he grabbed one of about ten nipples running along his belly and squeezed some kind of fluid down into the finger. He reattached it to the hand, carefully removing the screws from his mouth one at a time so he didn’t lose any while he worked. He did that to all six fingers and then moved up the hand to the wrist, the elbow, and finally to the shoulder.

Once Hred had cleaned and reattached everything, Metal Man moved the arm in a circle and flexed all of his fingers. Then he used the functioning arm to pull his other appendage from the water, and Hred repeated the process until, eventually, they’d completely restored Metal Man’s arms to full functionality.

At that point, I expected him to grab hold of a branch so he could release the death grip he had with his jaws. He did grab the branch, but Hred had to unbuckle the lower jaw and pry the teeth out of the bark with his hind feet. Metal Man released his upper jaw and, thus, his head on his own.

Hred fixed and reattached the jaw and then repeated the process for each leg. After about an hour, they had Metal Man fully functional again. Hred scampered back along the branch and once again squinted at my damaged arm.

He says he can fix it. Would you like your appendage functional again?

“No! I told you. My appendages don’t come off like yours.” I looked up as a triangular object raced toward us mere inches above the flowing water. I’d say it was about six feet tall, and each of the three sides was nearly six feet across. Unlike Metal Man, who was, well, metal color, this thing blended with whatever was in the background. If I hadn’t met Metal Man and Hred, I doubt my brain would have registered its existence. I would simply think I’d seen something and then convince myself there was nothing there.

The thing rose a few feet and then hovered at the level of Metal Man’s branch. A panel slid up into the roof, and Hred jumped inside.

I peered through the door, expecting lights and panels of instruments. I saw nothing except the slightly shimmering landscape and rushing water. “Why didn’t you call this thing before?”

I must be fully functional to summon the craft. Metal man held out a hand. If you enter, I will return you to where you left the solid surface and jumped into the hydrogen-2oxygen atmosphere to save me. He hesitated, and his eyes took on a slightly worried expression. Could you not mention to other beings like yourself that Hred and I made contact? We were only supposed to observe… his brows rose, and so I didn’t take offense, he added… but I’m glad you helped me not to cease.

Despite the pain in my arm, I smiled. My intuition was telling me that these were two young, rookie aliens on their first observational mission, and they were afraid their blunder would get back to their superiors. “Your secret is safe with me.”

Metal Man’s lips curled into an imitation of my smile. He motioned toward his…ship? Toward his ship, I guess, wanting me to step inside.

Since things couldn’t get any weirder, I took a leap of faith, unwound my good arm from the tree, cradled my broken arm, and half-crawled, half-fell into what appeared to be nothing but a shimmering facsimile of a spaceship.

Metal Man followed, the door slid down, and we zipped upstream to the entrance of the stable. We settled next to my truck, and the door slid up.

We know your ship. You are in our sector often. Maybe someday….

Holding my injured arm, I stepped out onto the muddy road. “I hope with all my heart to meet you again someday.” I paused and then added, “I don’t know your name.”

Sidllutemupartahme

I settled my broken arm against my stomach and held out my good hand. “Well, Sid, I’m Jessie. Good flying to you.”

Probably afraid of breaking this arm as well, Sid gingerly grasped my hand. And to you.

He retreated inside, but before the door slid shut, I waved to the little squirrel. “Bye, Hred.”

Hred squinted out at me from the back wall, and just before the door slid down on my two new friends, he lifted a paw in farewell.

©Alison Naomi Holt 2025