The Sentinels and Other Stories

From The Sentinels:

Dunn: He said that he was taking the way of the wind and the sky, and that he was going in-to Them-by which I presume he meant going into the tower and scaling the ladder. And he said other things: That our thoughts made patterns in their world-left ‘prints,’ as it were-as did theirs in ours; and that that was how they’d found us, by listening to our thoughts, zeroing in on our patterns. And he said that Bobby was merely a bundle of sensory organs wrapped in a skin of decaying matter and so wasn’t important, wasn’t needed. That only they mattered-they, the beings attached to and inhabiting the turbines. And that ... that ...

Detective Shaw: What, Mrs. Dunn? Say it.

Dunn: But ... don’t you see? It doesn’t matter what he said, because it wasn’t him speaking, not really. Bobby would never have described a human being as just a bundle of sensory organs; he truly believed, with every fiber of his being, that we were more than that-more than just the sum of our parts-it was what inspired him to become a doctor in the first place. And knowing what I knew, knowing what kind of man he was, I pressed him, telling him that Bobby did matter-that he mattered to his patients and that he mattered to me-more than I would ever be able to describe. And then I approached him and embraced him and told him I loved him-feeling, for the briefest of moments, the spirals beginning to close on his back-and he smiled, his eyes returning to normal, after which he said, or started to say, “I love ...” (room tone)

Detective Shaw: (inaudible) He-he told you he loved you?

Dunn: No. He ... his eyes rolled back ... and then his face, it ... it simply imploded. In a spiral. Like someone had flushed a toilet full of blood and brains.