Bernie's an EMT. He used to like his job.
       Now it's murder.
       The call comes in just before noon. He and Angie are in the hospital cafeteria, which actually serves decent food. Bernie's having a pastrami on rye from the kosher menu while Angie's wrestling a fried oyster po' boy.
       When their phones chime, Angie hurriedly stuffs the last bite of hero into her mouth and mumbles, "Damn, that's good," as she begins heading for the door.
       "Wouldn't know," Bernie says around a final mouthful of his own sandwich, following at her heels down the stairs to the garage.
       "Really, Bernie," she says skeptically over her shoulder. "I know you've eaten bacon."
       "So, sue me. What good Jew hasn't? Forbidden fruit and all that," he continues. "But oysters, well, honestly, I've never been tempted. They don't look ... appetizing."
       Angie laughs. "Your loss," she says as they get in the bus. Then she flips on the siren, and they burn rubber out of the parking lot.
       Angie's shift leader. She's at the wheel since she has seniority and enjoys driving. Bernie's riding shotgun and checking for traffic approaching at an angle. Reaching an intersection, he squints through the snow and says, "Go go go!"
       They go, slush spraying from their wheels.
       It's July in the Big Apple.
       Bernie almost, but not quite, misses worrying about global warming, only that became a non-issue back in '38 when the solar system entered what the scientists call the Big Cloud with the same understatement that they named the origin of everything the Big Bang. In most of the universe, the interstellar medium--space itself--has a density of less than one particle of gas or dust per ten cubic centimeters. The Big Cloud, however, is awash with hydrogen and helium, silicates, carbon, and water ice. Unfortunately, this dirty space not only crashed the satellites--goodbye, GPS!--but affected the Earth's atmosphere in a bad way. Now, there's a new ice age.
       "On your right!" Bernie warns, and Angie pumps the brakes, swerves, and keeps going. They're at 96th Street.
       "How are we doing for time, Bernie?" she asks.
       "Doing okay, chief," he tells her. Up the hill, flashing red and blue lights are barely visible through the rain and wet snow. Overhead, and as far south as the Carolinas, the sky is lit by auroras. The Hudson River is now frozen solid most of the year, and glaciers are crawling down the Catskills.
       Strange days, and getting stranger.
       The police have cordoned off the avenue. Angie parks the bus, grabs the ECT, and they scramble to the tape.
       "That him?" Bernie asks the nearest uniform, which is real a waste of breath. Only an idiot could mistake the madman for someone else. He's dancing naked in the snow.
       "Yeah," the cop answers, obviously unimpressed by Bernie's intelligence. A half dozen others join her and wait for instructions.
       Angie says: "Restrain the guy stat. We have five, ten minutes. After that, he's out of luck."
       Physicists think life evolved in the hot vacuum of the Big Cloud in the darkness between the stars. Not organic life. Maybe not even physical life in the sense of organisms made of matter. Somehow, the interaction of radiation, magnetism, and interstellar gas and dust gave birth to a sort of electrical life, living networks of energy as fragile as jellyfish. Scientists named them NOMADs--Negentropic self-Organizing Matter-Adjacent Drifters.
       Bernie has always figured this tortured acronym was coined to hide the fact no one has a clue what the visitors really are.
       The snow is coming down heavier than before, and the temperature is dropping. Bernie's beard is rimed with frost, as are Angie's dreads. The police surround the madman and move in. He doesn't fight, but he's flailing about, and the officers have to put their weight on his body to keep him down.
       "You ready, Bernie?" Angie asks.
       "I am," he says. "How do you want to do this?"
       "Your turn to prep. I'll shock," she replies.
       "Fine by me, chief," he says, and they go over to the huddle. The madman's in his fifties, portly and pink except for waxy patches of frostbite. Angie sets the ECT down, pulls the paddles from their slots, and says to the cops: "Unless you all enjoy a bit of electrocution, let go the moment I say so. Hear me?"
       "This isn't our first rodeo, ma'am," one answers.
       "Just making sure," Angie says and switches on the machine.
       Bernie wedges his way into the scrum and tries to force a mouthguard between the madman's lips, but he's whipping his head back and forth wildly, so Bernie says:
       "Someone hold his chin."
       Someone does, and Bernie jams the device past the madman's teeth and secures it in place with a couple of turns of tape.
       Bernie tries not to look into the madman's eyes while he works.
       He hates looking into their eyes.
       There is a bubble around the solar system created by the wind from the sun expanding outward against the interstellar medium. In the same way that a bow wave forms ahead of a ship sailing through water, the solar system creates a shock wave of turbulence as it moves through space. What this does to NOMADs is not understood. Bernie prays most are pushed aside like fish from the prow of a boat. It's more likely, though, that the electromagnetic foam chews up the majority of the gossamer creatures like a propeller screwing through sargassum weed.
       An infinitesimal fraction, however, makes it through the heliopause, through the termination shock zone, and through the magnetospheres of the inner planets.
       This minute percentage, terrifyingly, represents a real number so large as to be infinite. Every day, NOMADs rain down upon the Earth.
       In his mind, Bernie hears them screaming as they fall.
       Who can blame him for no longer believing in G-d?
       The madman breaks free and butts Bernie's head. He stumbles back, dazed, his kippa flying into the snow.
       "You okay?" Angie says, helping Bernie to his feet.
       "I'll live," Bernie answers, giving her their private wink to let her know he's all right while rubbing the bruise that will be a knot in the morning, telling himself to come on, Bernie baby, bubala, and then he pins on his cap and tries to swab the madman's temples with conductive gel, but the stuff flies everywhere except where it's supposed to go. Finally, a couple more uniforms join in and hold the man still long enough for Bernie to wipe on a good thick schmear, like on a bagel.
       "Ready," Bernie says.
       It's time to save a life. Or commit murder. He no longer can tell the difference.
       The hum of the ECT grows louder as the machine comes up to charge. Shaking her ice-frosted dreads aside, Angie leans in with the paddles and says: "On my mark--clear!"
       The police release the madman. Angie claps the paddles to his head and shoots a jolt of electricity into his brain.
       At that moment, against his better judgment, Bernie looks into the madman's eyes.
       Most NOMADs that make it into the atmosphere are torn apart during their plunge to the Earth. Those that live through the descent, like sea creatures stranded on the shore, are doomed to quick extinction.
       Sometimes, however, one of the things intersects a human body and latches on to the human nervous system like a limpet clinging to a rock. Most people think they are feeding on human thoughts. Another theory is they are nesting in the interstitial spaces between neurons. Bernie's guess, for what it's worth, is simply that NOMADs, like people, fear dying alone and are reaching out for companionship in their last moments.
       The madman's gaze is an abyss of unreason as unrelenting as a black hole. At the bleeding edge of perception, Bernie senses chthonic mysteries beyond the scope of human imagination. He hears the songs stars sing, a sibilant radioactive melody. On his tongue is the hoarfrost taste of distant nebulae, and his nostrils fill with the sickly sweet scent of novae dead ten million years.
       Then Angie is shaking him.
       "Come on, Bernie baby," she says. "Come on, bubala," and suddenly, he's in the snow, and his teeth are chattering. He doesn't know where he finds the energy to mutter: "That's my line, chief," and he flashes her their wink again to assure her he's okay.
       The madman is still possessed. Sometimes, it takes several doses of electricity--and higher voltages--to unseat NOMADs from the bodies in which they are lodged.
       Sometimes, the procedure fails.
       He and Angie have seen that happen often enough. There's no good outcome. A human being cannot endure intimacy with such an alien presence. If they fail to evict the visitor, insanity will be the least of the madman's problems. His nervous system will go haywire. His heart rate will spike, and he will begin to bleed from his eyes. Then he'll suffer cardiac arrest or stroke out.
       Angie dials the ECT up to 240 volts.
       "Clear!" she orders, placing the paddles to the madman's head, releasing the direct current. He convulses, but the crazy light filling his eyes does not dim.
       Then Angie twists the dial up to 460 volts and sets the timer for a full six seconds.
       A dosage of 460 volts is considered safe, barely. Such a high voltage, though, particularly when applied for a prolonged period of time, can singe brain tissue and tear holes in neural cells, a process known as electroporation.
       "Four sixty, Angie?" Bernie asks. "You sure?"
       "No, Bernie, I'm not," she answers, "but what other option do we have? This guy will flat-line if we don't get that thing out of him."
       "You're right, chief," he says, grateful it's her call to make, and he smears more gel on the madman. "Ready."
       The paddles charge. Angie says:
       "Clear!"
       They clear. Except Bernie can't.
       The madman grabs his wrist and grips it with maniacal strength just as Angie puts the ECT paddles to his temples. The buzzing of the timer elongates into forever. Electricity courses through the madman and into Bernie, creating a conduit through which something flows from the madman into his flesh, something maddeningly indecipherable, something so utterly celestial that he has to scream, although he has never owned a mouth or breathed air.
       So, Bernie screams. He can't help it. He screams.
       He screams, but he does not go insane. Not right away.
       Evidently, much as a vaccine prepares the body against viral disease, exposure to NOMADs in the course of his duties has hardened Bernie against the entity. After riding the bus with Angie for years, he's been, in the slang of his youth, vaxxed and boosted.
       No vaccine is one hundred percent effective.
       Bernie's clinging to reason with bloody fingertips, his senses in bedlam, and he feels the snow as a melody, and the emergency lights are flashes of bittersweet, and he can't tell if he's Bernie Steinhardt or something warm/tingle/dark that has never had a name in all eternity.
       He's not dying, but he can't control his body, and he can't talk, and he's babbling and twitching in the downpour. Inside, though, he's pushing back, telling himself over and over, like he's davening, to come on, Bernie baby, as he pushes again.
       The madman they'd been called to save is lying still in the snow. Two uniforms wrap him in a foil blanket and hoist him into the bus while Angie holds Bernie tight.
       He's the madman now.
       "What the hell is going on?" someone asks.
       "I think the NOMAD got into my partner," Angie says.
       "Never heard of that happening before," another cop says.
       "Neither have I," Angie admits. "Keep him down while I charge the machine. Let's go, people. Every second counts."
       No one moves. After a pause, one asks for them all, "You sure he isn't--contagious?"
       "No freaking idea," Angie snaps. "Now get in gear, stat. We're wasting time."
       Reluctantly, four uniforms approach and restrain Bernie's limbs. Angie rights the ECT, brushes slush off the metal box, and boots it up.
       She's going to shock him.
       Bernie doesn't want to be shocked, but there's nothing he can do to stop Angie. He can't control his body. He can't speak. He's spastic and mute, and he's locked in his mind with an inhuman presence that is literally driving him insane.
       Angie looks into his eyes. "Sorry, Bernie," she whispers.
       Then she jams a mouthguard past his teeth and anoints his temples with conductive gel. Removing the paddles from their sleeves, she warns the others, "Remember--on my mark!"
       "Yes, ma'am!" the cops chorus immediately.
       "All right," Angie says. "Ready ... steady--clear!"
       The uniforms release Bernie an instant before the paddles contact his skin. Electricity sparks into his cortex, as solid as a fist, as sharp as splintered glass, as searing as glowing iron, blistering like a palm pressed on a griddle, the hurt so brutal he'd scream if he could.
       Except he can't, not out loud. He's gagged.
       Inside his skull, however, he's screaming voicelessly. He's not alone, either. The NOMAD is screaming with him.
       Bernie always knew they screamed.
       Unfortunately, Angie set the ECT to deliver six seconds of charge. She's not only his partner; she's his friend, and she's doing all she can to free him from the extraterrestrial interloper in his cranium.
       Then the timer winds down, and the machine switches off.
       Angie peers into his eyes and doesn't like what she sees.
       "It's still in him," she says to the uniforms hovering at her shoulder.
       She's right.
       Something is different, though. It's difficult for Bernie even to think about the NOMAD, and his thoughts are only analogies, but now the thing is--a lesser pale? A greater deepness? Bluer than musk? He can't say. Words break apart into random syllables as he struggles to frame them into sentences. There is an event horizon around the NOMAD against which human language dissolves like sea foam into sand.
       One fact, however, is clear. The stranger feels pain no less than he does. The NOMAD is as aware of being alive as Bernie is aware of his own existence.
       Half of Bernie wants Angie to charge the paddles immediately and evict the thing from inside of him.
       His better half, however, refuses to be an accessory to murder. Not again. He will not be complicit. Not anymore. Even if it means his own ...
       Well, whatever, Bernie thinks. Let's not go there.
       He's an EMT. He used to like his job.
       He wants to like his job again.
       Come on, Bernie, he thinks. You can do this. Figure it out.
       He's alive. He's still himself--and sane, he hopes. That's a good starting point. It means he and the NOMAD can exist together without mutual annihilation.
       In the short term.
       Long term? Maybe not so much.
       Unless they can find a way to survive side by side within one small human head.
       Bernie's head.
       This is when Bernie thinks of oysters.
       As he told Angie, he's never eaten one. They're not kosher, and even though Bernie no longer believes in Hashem, he's still observant.
       Once a Jew, always a Jew. G-d has nothing to do with it.
       Besides, oysters remind Bernie of phlegm.
       On the other hand, Bernie's not thinking about oysters because of their culinary appeal or lack thereof. He's thinking of oysters because of pearls. Sometimes, a grain of sand gets stuck in an oyster, irritating its flesh. To ease itself, the oyster encapsulates the speck of grit in layers of smooth nacre and, in time, creates a beautiful gem.
       He's thinking maybe he can do the same.
       Bernie's no bivalve, of course, and besides, he doubts anything physical could cage something as intangible as a NOMAD. What he needs is a--a metaphysical? metaphorical?--pearl. A buffer of reason to contain the unreasoning thing.
       A sort of mental nacre.
       Good one, Bernie tells himself. That's the ticket, Bernie. Mental nacre.
       Then, he begins counting.
       Seriously, counting.
       What could be simpler?
       One ... two ... three ... four ... one ... two ... three ... four ...
       That's it. He recites the numbers in time with his human heartbeat. Over and over with the cadence of his pulse.
       No one has ever called Bernie Steinhardt a genius, but he figures the opposite of disorder is order ... and what could be more orderly than counting? By counting, he's putting a ruler to chaos, making a pearl of sequence in his mind, and, like an oyster, protecting the soft tissue of his brain from the irritant that is the NOMAD.
       Bernie's an optimist. He begins to hope he just might live through the whole meshugah experience.
       Yeah, right. As the saying goes--men plan, and G-d laughs.
       Four uniforms press Bernie to the ground. Angie charges the ECT. She's going to shock him again.
       He keeps counting one-two-three-four with a part of his mind as she leans in.
       Please, no, he pleads with another part of his mind, but the thought does not reach his lips and she puts the paddles to his head.
       Soon, he's sobbing inside. There's a point, Bernie learns, at which you surrender to pain in utter helplessness, and he's reached that point.
       He's still counting, though.
       Counting while being tortured is easier than Bernie assumed it would be, although, thinking about it, he realizes musicians are able to tap out a beat while simultaneously playing an instrument, so the trick can't be that hard to learn.
       Particularly if your life depends on it.
       Bernie's does.
       The current finally switches off. The NOMAD is still a black hole, but now there is--distance? dimension?--between them. Bernie's not out of the woods yet, but now he can--perceive? discern? descry?--the NOMAD without being sucked into its insane alien maw.
       Insane alien maw, he repeats. Original, Bernie. You should write science fiction.
       No, not really.
       The NOMAD, however, isn't his most urgent problem. That's Angie. She's going to shock him a third time.
       He can't help himself. He thinks of electroporation.
       Your brain cells fry. Like latkes. Bernie knows he won't live through another electrocution. Neither will the NOMAD. They'll die together.
       Is that irony? Or tragedy? Bernie doesn't know. Maybe it's just an accident.
       The good news is he's feeling more human, more like Bernie, since he began counting, and although he's still having convulsions, he thinks his nerves are settling down. Hopefully, this means he'll regain control of his body, but he's betting the process will take a while--and time is something Bernie doesn't have.
       The ECT is recharging. Angie frowns as she decides what to do. Then, she twists the power dial clockwise, increasing the voltage way up past the safe range.
       Angie's not only his partner, she's his friend. With benefits, actually, not that it's anyone's business. She's determined to cure him even if she has to kill him in the process.
       Bernie's heart breaks as he realizes how much Angie really cares.
       Focus, Bernie, he thinks frantically. You've survived worse.
       Honestly, no, He hasn't. This is a lie he tells himself to keep on going.
       Manipulating his arms and legs is out of the question. What with the mouthguard between his teeth, it's no use trying to talk, either. Only his eyes are free.
       They're as spastic as the rest of him.
       But you don't need both eyes, Bernie, he explains to himself patiently. You can do one eye, can't you? Only one eye. How hard could one eye be?
       Okay. Maybe he can do one eye.
       You only need one eye to wink.
       Weirdly, at this instant, Bernie suddenly regains faith in Hashem. Well, not altogether. A little. Maybe somewhat. He'll wait and see how things work out.
       The point is, he realizes he is actually qualified to succeed at what he must do. He's one of the few people in the world who have been there and done that. This can't be a coincidence. Maybe there is a divine plan.
       When Bernie was three years old, because of a series of throat infections, his tonsils were removed. After the surgery, he woke in a strange bed in a dark hospital ward. The anesthetic hadn't worn off. Even though he was awake, he was unable to move or speak.
       This condition is called sleep paralysis.
       For good reason, it's also known as the night terrors.
       He remembers panic. He remembers trying to get up from bed and failing to lift a finger. He remembers sobbing and being unable to utter a sound or to let flow his tears.
       In that moment of helplessness, Bernie learned your body and your mind are separate things.
       He also learned about will.
       Will is what connects your flesh with your self.
       Will isn't thought. You don't think to walk or to wink.
       Will is intention without hesitation.
       Just do it.
       No, schmuck, Bernie chides himself. That's the Nike slogan.
       Just be it.
       That's the lesson he learned at the age of three as he released a voiceless primal howl of fear ... and woke himself up.
       A second later, he was howling for real. Aloud. Nurses came running into the ward.
       One eye, Bernie, he repeats. Just one eye!
       He has to let Angie know he's okay.
       Wink or die, that's the whole game.
       Sure, it's a bad plan, but it's the only one he has.
       Angie leans in and looks into his eyes as the ECT finishes charging. Bernie knows she's searching for some sign of him, for some indication he's still Bernie inside.
       He has to give her one.
       He has to just be it.
       So, he is.
       He holds his right eye still and deliberately brings the eyelid down and then slowly upward in an unmistakable wink.
       He doesn't think of the six muscles working together that control the eye. Or of the four other muscles that control the lid.
       He doesn't even voice his opinion of whoever came up with such a fakakta design in the first place.
       He wills the wink, and there it is--their wink.
       This is all he can do, and he fears it isn't enough, and Angie will deliver the killing charge into his temples, but then she looks confused.
       "Did you just wink at me, Bernie Steinhardt?" she asks.
       He winks again. It's easier this time.
       Relief floods Angie's face like sunshine. She's so radiant the ice frosting her dreads begins to melt. Either that, or she's crying on him.
       "Bernie," she whispers, letting the paddles drop. "Baby. Oh, bubala."
       An hour later, he's in a hospital bed. A day after that, the tremors are gone and he's sitting up and talking with people. He explains about the NOMAD and about oysters and mental nacre. That's the easy part. It's impossible to describe the experience of sharing your head with a celestial being from the depths of space, so he doesn't really try.
       By the end of the week, Bernie doesn't even need to count any longer. His pulse alone, automatically beating out its cadence, has become enough of a buffer from the NOMAD to keep him sane. He does have vivid dreams, though. And every so often, he peers inward and allows himself to regard his guest directly, if only for a second, and for that second, Bernie partakes of infinity.
       Pretty soon he's giving courses in counting to other first responders.
       They're calling it the Steinhardt Maneuver.
       Really.
       Who would have ever thought? He's as famous as Henry Heimlich.
       Some genius comes up with a technique to transfer NOMADs safely from one body to another without using a lethal dose of electricity. Other people figure out how to keep multiple aliens in their heads at a time without going crazy. By the end of the year, a network of Certified Designated Hosts is deployed worldwide to assist with cases of NOMAD contact.
       They're able to save a few.
       Maybe it's not much, but it's something.
       Bernie's okay with that.
       He's no longer a murderer. He's an EMT.
       He likes his job.