Pandemonium by Warren Fahy

back of four of his hands that framed fossils he had collected from his island, which he had laid out on his desk next to his computer. Nell, Geoffrey, and Andy had helped him rescue the fossils while they were escaping from the island. Illuminated by the sun, the fragments of Henders Island were “museum-quality replicas” of the originals, Andy told him. The humans were keeping the “real ones” for study. The ones they returned to him seemed exactly the same, but they were made of something else. They were like food made of stone, or stones made of food. Everything in his world was being replaced with something else that humans called by the same name.
    Most of the sels’ possessions had never been returned to them. Andy, who was the first person they had met on Henders Island and who was now one of their full-time companions, explained to Hender that their things were “pilfered” somewhere along their journey from Henders Island and that some had been sold for huge prices on the “black market” and on online auction sites before the “authorities” were able to stop it.
    The voice of Joe, one of the two navy officers assigned to the sels, buzzed through Hender’s intercom. “It’s showtime in three minutes, Hender!”
    Hender closed his MacBook. “OK, Joe.” He descended from his room, his six hands doubling as feet. His legs rolled like a pianist’s hand down the winding stairs until he emerged into a replica of a B-29 fuselage—a little larger than the real one that had pierced his tree house over half a century ago on Henders Island. The others were waiting for him.
    Hender scanned the magazine pages and product packages he had stuck to his walls and ceiling, on which he had plastered the garbage he had collected on his beach while studying humans from afar, to remind him of his home. He felt disoriented, his arms reaching out like buttresses to steady himself.
    “Come on, Hender!” Bo sat with the other sels on his long red sofa in front of Hender’s giant HDTV.
    Andy and Joe fussed at a kitchen counter behind the sofa. “Popcorn’s done!” Joe announced, taking a large bowl out of the microwave. “What did Steven Spielberg call the shark in Jaws ?”
    “Bruce,” said Bo from the sofa.
    “Damn, too easy.” Joe regretted wasting his turn. Joe and Bo were pop-culture trivia rivals who were locked in perpetual combat. They had lots of time on their hands in the “Hendro-Dome,” as they called it, after being indefinitely assigned to this duty ever since contact with the sels on Oahu. In addition to their other duties, they had become emergency handymen and assistants, as well as security, keeping people out and, perhaps, the hendros in. With the desolation and heavy security around the base, their duty wasn’t terribly pressing. The sels had no desire to leave their air-conditioned dome to cross the simmering desert, and nobody could possibly reach them here.
    After the sels’ intense objections, supervising officials had agreed not to subject them to a rotating staff. Hender had explained to the humans that sels needed to meet and know each person individually and that they were intimidated by groups and by strangers. Moreover, the sels were not used to having people leave them. Ever . Until death, that is, which was a very rare and traumatic event in their experience.
    Though they were largely independent and nonsocial, they valued the few individuals in each other’s presence to an extreme degree. The absence of Nell and Geoffrey while on their honeymoon had been explained to them many times, but still it filled them with dread that they could be gone for two whole weeks.
    Andy served them a platter of barbecued spiger brochettes that he had cooked in a George Foreman Grill. “Eat up! We’ve only got a few hundred pounds of frozen spiger steaks left, so savor the flavor.”
    Hender smelled the roasted spiger meat with a melancholy pleasure. This meat had been made available to the