Roughly an hour had passed since Albert had last left the bathroom.  He had eaten, and he had drunk his cup of coffee, and he was quietly scrolling through some of the stories on the Google news page, when a feeling of strange disquiet rather suddenly grew upon him.

He lifted his head from his contemplation of his home computer screen and looked around.  His small living space was fairly well circumscribed, and almost all of it was in view from any other point within it.  There really was no place for anyone or anything to hide—at least, nothing much larger than a spider or an occasional roach.

Nevertheless, he felt a sense of unseen threat, or at least some worry, developing.  He looked down at his forearms and was mildly surprised to see them riddled with goosebumps.

He straightened his back and tried, for just a moment, to think of anything in his apartment that might serve as a weapon.  Then he caught himself and wondered what was happening in his head.  It was not like him to feel suddenly afraid, as if he had just read some particularly scary story, and certainly not on a Saturday morning.  Why on Earth did he feel this way?

He tried to listen, to hear if there was any sound coming either from outside, or perhaps from the living area of the people with whom he shared the subdivided house, but there was nothing.  He had long since noticed that his housemates tended to sleep in on Saturdays, though thankfully that wasn’t because they had loud parties on Friday nights.  The house was quiet as far as he could hear.  The only certain sound he detected, inside or outside, was the noise of his own breathing, which was faint.  He shifted a little in his chair, and he heard the slight squeak of that movement as if it were an amplified sound effect.

He looked around the room again.  The only parts of his living space that were not in his immediate view were the insides of cupboards and his closet and the bathroom.

A brief, wild thought shot through Albert’s head that somehow, against all probability, Walter had made his way into Albert’s home and was in the bathroom, trying to make off with the V-42 while Albert wasn’t looking.  It was impossible, of course.  There was not even a window in Albert’s bathroom, and only one bare space of its wall actually abutted the outer wall of the house.  Walter would literally have had to find that spot and secretly tunnel his way in without making any noise in the time that it had taken Albert to fix and eat his breakfast.

Now that was a near-infinite improbability, he mused.

Still, he felt some sense of significant disquiet, and he thought perhaps it was related to Walter and to the V-42, though perhaps that was only because those were the two commingled subjects that were on his mind in the first place.  Still, he decided he would at least disabuse himself of truly foolish but disturbing notions, and he rose from his chair and walked to the bathroom.

Of course, there was no sign of Walter there—Albert hadn’t honestly expected him—and the two cups sat on the vanity as they had when Albert had so recently left the room.  The shampoo bottle rested peacefully on the little ledge in the shower area.  If there was a change in the level of liquid in any of the containers, it was too small a change for Albert to detect.

He breathed a quick sigh of what he supposed was relief, though at least some of it took origin in impatience at his own overactive imagination.

“Heh,” he began, laughing at himself, about to tell the V-42 about his surge of anxiety.  Before he could do more than utter that syllable of self-deprecation, however, the V-42 began writing on the surface of the cup.

“Albert,” it wrote.  “We are glad that you have come to check in.  We are concerned about something.”

This surprised Albert, especially considering the feelings with which he had just been dealing.  “What do you mean?” he asked.

“We fear that Walter is taking some…erratic and potentially drastic action,” it wrote.

Albert blinked, almost as surprised because he had just been having anxiety that centered on Walter as he was because of the words on the cup.

“What sort of ‘drastic action’?” he asked.  “What do you mean?”

The V-42 once again began writing quickly, though it still left its words on the cup just long enough for Albert to read them before it erased them and put up the next string of letters.  “Walter left his home roughly twenty minutes ago, and we guessed this was merely to go grocery shopping, as he had stated was his intent during his conversation with you.  However, his general state was far more tense and agitated than one would expect for such a routine outing.”

“Okay,” Albert said.  “Well, maybe…maybe it’s not so much that he’s tense about shopping as that he’s tense and he’s shopping.”

“That would be reasonable,” the V-42 agreed, “except that he is not shopping.  Our communication transmissions can also act as a means of confirming location, as both angle and distance between ourselves change.  He has been driving since he left his house—he is not doing so with unusual speed, and his path was initially somewhat meandering, perhaps indicating indecision on his part.  However, it has now begun to be more direct, and he is steadily getting closer to this house.  We think it almost certain that he is heading here.”

This surprised Albert.  He tried to remember whether he had even told Walter his current address.  The last place Walter had visited him had been in the house he had shared with his wife, but that had been some years before.  Still, he might have forwarded his contact information.  Anyway, it wouldn’t be too hard for someone both reasonably clever and computer-savvy, both of which Walter was, to find someone’s home address.  It wasn’t as though Albert had tried to hide his location.

“Okay,” he said, “I guess that’s…a little weird.  I mean, as far as he knows, you’re not even going to have written a response before noon.  And as far as he knows, I won’t even be here right now.  I said I was going to run out to do some errands, and I tried to make it obvious that I meant to do it soon.  He shouldn’t even expect me to be here.”

“We believe that he is indeed expecting that, that he is ‘counting on it’ as the expression goes,” the shampoo wrote.  “We suspect, perhaps, that he means to attempt to break into your living quarters, either to observe us, or perhaps to steal us.”

“What?” Albert asked.  “That…that’s crazy.  I mean, Walter’s no thief or…or burglar or whatever you call it.”

“That is almost certainly true under normal circumstances,” the V-42 allowed.  “However, his level of agitation is quite extreme, even relative to the state he has been in recently.  Also, we are fairly certain that he is carrying a firearm.”

This seemingly off-the-cuff statement threw Albert into silence born more of surprise and disbelief than fear.  It took a few moments before he finally asked, “What do you mean, a firearm?  What…why do you think that?”

“Before he left his living quarters, he evidently went to his closet, and based upon his position and body location, he stretched up to reach for something on a high shelf.  After this, he moved around in the closet, and as he did, he muttered to himself the words, ‘Bullets, bullets…where are you?’  Then he stopped shuffling and straightened, and said to himself, ‘Ah, there you are.  Come here, my beauties.’  Then he performed some comparatively intricate physical actions before finally leaving his home to head…well, to head in this direction as it eventually turned out.”

Albert blinked.  He hadn’t even been aware that Walter owned a gun, though he guessed there wouldn’t really have been any reason to know it.  He tried to think back to when they had first known each other better.  Had Walter ever expressed an interest in guns at all, beyond a rather ordinary enjoyment of violent action movies such as most young men tended to enjoy?  Albert couldn’t remember Walter ever talking about shooting or hunting or anything of the sort.

Maybe Walter had decided to buy a gun as a matter of personal security.  Albert had read sometimes that guns owned for personal protection were often a greater threat to the owner than to any potential intruder or attacker, but he suspected all such statistics were born at least partially from motivated reasoning, since they all seemed to come from people who were against guns.  Not that the pro-gun people were any less biased in the things they presented.  But Walter might easily have considered himself not to fall within ordinary statistics about such things, no matter which side was more accurate.

He realized that he did not doubt that the V-42 was correct, that Walter did indeed have a gun and had it with him.  The fact that he had apparently been muttering about trying to find bullets and then seemed to have found them made it difficult to come to another conclusion.  It wasn’t likely that Walter would search high shelves in his closet for some misplaced memo containing bullet points, after all.

He lightly bit his lower lip.  Thinking aloud, he asked, “Why would he bring a gun with him to come here and maybe try to steal…you?”

“Perhaps he has it in case he is interrupted by one of your neighbors,” the V-42 replied.  “He could use it to warn off anyone intruding upon his attempts, at least long enough for him to make his escape.”

“That sound pretty risky,” Albert noted.  “I mean, some of the people who live around here might be armed, for all I know.  This is sort of a ‘gun rights’ state.  I think it would be safer if he would just run if he was interrupted.”

“Perhaps,” the V-42 said again.  “But he is not in his ideal state of mind at the moment, and his agitation is increasing somewhat as he gets closer.”

Albert gave a little shiver, somehow feeling more disquieted than he would have expected by the notion that Walter was headed to his house, uninvited.  He had never felt threatened by Walter before, though he had occasionally been irritated by Walter’s ambition and presumptuousness.  Now, though, given what the V-42 had said, he found himself wondering aloud, “What…what do you think Walter would do if he gets here and finds out that I haven’t actually gone out on any errands.  I mean, if I were to catch him trying to break in, and he’s armed, and he couldn’t think of a good explanation…”

The V-42 quickly wrote, “We cannot perfectly model what the likely outcome would be.  However, given the degree of his agitation and stress levels, it is not impossible that he may take violent action.  His amygdalae seem highly activated, and they can overpower the would-be suppression and control of impulsive behavior that is brought about by the frontal lobes.”

Albert recognized the word “amygdalae” from before, and he thought he understood what the shampoo meant when it talked of the frontal lobe controlling impulsive behavior.  So, it seemed as though the V-42 was saying that Walter might not be in full control of his actions.  He might do something that he normally would not do, even something would later regret.

“Shit,” he muttered; strangely enough, he felt awkward about having cursed in front of the V-42.  Then he simply asked of the air, “What the hell should I do?”  He found himself picturing strange and bizarre possibilities, the most dominant one being Walter arriving at his apartment, kicking the door in, and demanding at gunpoint that Arthur give him the V-42.

Walter should know, based on their previous conversations, that such an action would be foolish.  Albert had made it clear that the V-42 said it would work for him, not for Walter.  But Walter only had his, Albert’s, word for what the V-42 had actually said and done.  Maybe he didn’t believe Albert.  Maybe he thought Albert had been deliberately holding out on him—which, in some sense, he had—and that in reality the stuff would work for him just as readily as it did for Albert.

In any case, the V-42 said Walter was agitated and not entirely rational.  The daily news reports, such as he had recently been reading, made it only too obvious to Albert that people were capable of doing extremely stupid things when in the grip of strong emotions, particularly fear and anger.

Apparently in response to Albert’s more or less rhetorical question, the V-42 wrote, “There is a potential way for you to keep us where Walter could never steal us.”

Albert blinked.  “What do you mean?” he asked.

“If Walter is coming here with the intention to steal us, perhaps under threat of force, there is a way for us to be entirely inaccessible to him, but in such a way that would not force him into an act of despair such as might happen if you told him you had, for instance, poured us down the drain, never to be of use to anyone again.”

Albert felt a little confused and slow, but he said, “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like it would be a good plan.  And it would be a terrible waste.  I have a hard enough time thinking about the ones of you that get washed down the drain when I shower.”

“You need not concern yourself with that,” the shampoo wrote.  “We simply upload any useful data from the parts of us that are washed away and then deconstruct those machines shortly after they have left your body.”

“Okay,” Albert said.  He wanted to feel exasperated with the V-42 for wasting time explaining that to him, but he honestly felt relieved.  Still, it wasn’t really relevant to his current concern.  He could imagine Walter approaching ever closer, his eyes wide and wild—perhaps bloodshot—and his hands gripping his steering wheel tightly, a shiny pistol resting in his lap.  He almost wished Walter would get pulled over on the way, but he suspected that he would not be so lucky as that.

“So, then,” he went on, “what’s the way, or place, or whatever, that I could hide you from him?”

There was a very slight pause, just noticeable to Albert, but still enough to surprise him.  It seemed as if the V-42 was trying to figure out how to put what it was going to say next, or perhaps debating with itself about whether it should say it.

Finally, it wrote, “The idea may at first seem distasteful to you, but we can assure you it would not be unpleasant.”

Puzzled by the fact that V-42 seemed almost to be stalling, Albert said, “Okay, well, what’s the idea, then?”

“You could swallow us,” the V-42 replied.

Albert alternately blinked and stared for quite a long moment, though the meaning of the words he read on the cup didn’t really leave themselves open to too many interpretations.  Finally, he asked, “What do you mean, swallow you?”

Part of him expected a snarky response, since he knew his question was fairly stupid.  Nevertheless, the V-42 was clearly quite patient, and it wrote, “We literally mean that you could drink us.  Those of us in the cups and those of us in the original bottle.”

Albert tried to process the suggestion, to figure out if it was something the stuff was seriously proposing.  It was hard for him to believe that it was, but it certainly didn’t seem like the time or place to be kidding.  Also, though he’d never known any other substance made of a sentient population of nano-machines, the V-42 did not seem like the sort of stuff that would joke around.

Nevertheless, the idea of drinking shampoo was inherently repulsive.  When he was very little, he might have sampled shampoo or dishwashing liquid, thinking its pleasant smell meant that it would taste good, too, but if so, he knew he would swiftly have learned the error of that assumption.

“But…” he muttered, “…but…I can’t drink shampoo.  I mean, I don’t think I’d be able to swallow you without choking or throwing up, even if it was a matter of life or death.”

“Don’t forget,” the V-42 wrote back, “that we are not actually any form of soap or detergent, the swallowing of which might indeed elicit an involuntary protective response from your body.  Our soapy nature is, in fact, partly simulated and partly emulated.  The scent you perceive from us is likewise triggered by a calculated configuration among us to stimulate specific combinations of olfactory receptors.  We can similarly manipulate our effects on your tastebuds and the rest of your mouth and throat to make us seem entirely pleasant, and even delicious, for you to swallow.”  It paused for a moment, then added, “You could even tell us what flavor you might prefer.”

Albert blinked.  He had to admit that the words made sense.  He knew that the V-42 was not actually any kind of soap, nor did it contain any scented chemicals, but it nevertheless was delightful to smell every time he noticed it.  In fact, sniffing the air at the moment, and paying attention to what his body had pushed to the background up to that point, he reminded himself that the V-42 really did smell nice, better even than his previous favorite shampoo.

But it was hard to believe that the same trick could be pulled on his sense of taste that would allow him to drink a significant quantity of what he could not resist thinking of as shampoo.

Also, there was another problem.

“Wait,” he said.  “Even if I could swallow everything in both cups and the bottle without throwing up…I mean, it’s not like I’m ever going to be able to get every last drop.  Would I…I mean, would it be…would I wash you out after that, rinsing out the bottle and the cups after?  Because Walter knows that you can make more of yourselves from even a few starting ones.”

“We could make more of us from a single starting one,” the V-42 responded, “if that one were not accidentally destroyed.  But such rinsing would not be necessary.  We are not a passive fluid.  If you drink us, we can actively conglomerate and remove each and every one of ourselves from the three containers.  There would be no residua.”

Albert pulled his head back and cocked it a bit to the side, like a puzzled cocker spaniel.  “Really?” he said.  “That’s…kinda neat, I’m not gonna lie.”

“There are many things that we can do that any ordinary shampoo could not do, of course,” the stuff wrote.

Albert reoriented himself, trying to stay focused in the face of the remarkable new revelations and the previous, disturbing ones about Walter.  He said, “But, even if it’s doable and everything, which I believe you about…isn’t it kind of…drastic?  I mean, shouldn’t we try something else before doing a mass self-destruct?”

“Do not misunderstand, Albert,” the V-42 wrote.  “This process would in no way entail a form of self-destruction for us.  Once you imbibe us—if you imbibe us—we can simply agglomerate together either within or around your digestive system and remain inert until you tell us verbally that you are ready for us to come back out.  Then, we can return from your gastrointestinal tract via a painless regurgitation.  We would hope you would have a container ready to receive us, but even if you did not, we can, with effort, hold ourselves together even on an otherwise non-enclosing surface.  You need not fear us being affected either by your digestive system of your immune system.  We are not susceptible to harm by either of those things.”

Albert felt his mouth drop open, at least partly at the bizarre image of himself somewhere, leaning over a bowl, giving a word of reassurance, and having the V-42 all come flowing up out of his mouth and into the bowl, yellow-orange, transparent, and clean smelling as it was at the moment in his bathroom.  He didn’t know precisely where he was imagining the scene happening, but it wasn’t in his own place.  In his vivid little imagined scenario, he was apparently on the run, or at least on the move, because he saw himself performing this bizarre vomiting ritual in a nice hotel room somewhere.

The notion of him seeing himself as something like a character in a spy thriller or similar was amusing, but that was negligible next to the concept that, if necessary, the V-42 could hide away within his body—within his digestive system—to return when it was safe and go back to being shampoo.

It certainly seemed like it would be a relatively safe place for it to hide.  He even supposed that, if he had an early ulcer developing, it could probably fix that when it was down there.  He tried not to think of it going all the way through to his lower GI tract, more for its sake than for his.

The prospect seemed crazy, and he was not at all sure that he liked the idea, but clearly it sounded as though it could work.

What would Walter do, after all, if he came to Albert’s place and Albert told him that there was no point trying to steal the V-42 because he, Albert, had drunk it all?  Would he glumly resign himself to failure, perhaps to despair?  Or would be become outraged and lose what control of himself he currently had?  Albert didn’t like to think of his friend doing such a thing, but it didn’t seem impossible for Walter to fly off the handle entirely if told that Albert had swallowed the V-42.

With that in mind, he asked, “What if Walter just…loses it if I tell him I drank you, and that there’s no way for anyone to use you to make money in any way?  I mean if he goes berserk and just shoots me or something…would you be able to keep me alive from inside, there?”

He was speaking half in jest.  Though his imagination was working at much more than its usual pace—triggered by the anxiety he felt over Walter’s approach—he honestly did not think his friend capable of shooting him.

However, the V-42 responded, “Yes, we can repair you against nearly any injury caused by an ordinary handgun, particularly one used by an inexpert assailant.  This possibility is one of the main reasons we suggested that you hide us by swallowing us.”

Mildly surprised, though he supposed he shouldn’t be, Albert asked, “Really?  You could even heal a gunshot wound?”

“Yes, we can,” the shampoo replied.  “Though to be able to do so most efficiently—say, to keep you from suffering prolonged pain and perhaps unconsciousness and blood loss—it would be advisable for us not to conglomerate entirely within or near your digestive tract, but to spread throughout your body, so that we could act most efficiently in any region that might be injured.  We would want your permission before doing that—except in the presence of emergency.”

Albert blinked again, shaking his head in wonder bordering on incredulity as he did.  “So, wait…you could just sort of…what, spread through my body and be ready and waiting to kind of…fix me fast if I got shot or something?”

“That’s correct,” the V-42 replied.  “We would need your permission to work with and act on your body’s various systems in order to do so—though again, in an emergency, we could and would act without such permission.  For instance, if you were rendered unconscious, we would act to preserve your life and return you to health without requiring you to request it of us.”

Albert tried to process all this, having trouble even developing images in his mind about it, but a new thought occurred to him now, one that was rather disturbing.  “But,” he said, “what if I got, say…shot in the head?  I mean, I don’t know how good a shot Walter is or how crazy he might be, but he could even accidentally shoot me in the head.  I mean…if my brain gets damaged, there wouldn’t be any way to fix me without, like…changing my brain or something.  I might lose memories, or some part of my personality or something.  I’ve heard about things like that happening to people with brain damage or strokes or things.”

“It is more complicated to repair neural tissue, particularly in the depths of the brain,” the V-42 wrote, “but especially if we work quickly—if, for instance, we already have a presence within the brain—we could repair the tissue with very little or even no loss of prior state.  We can work very quickly when necessary.”

Albert took a deep breath, frankly a little awestruck by what the shampoo was saying.  It sounded as though it could protect him thoroughly and repair him from anything short of, perhaps, being blown to pieces.  Or, who knew, maybe if the pieces were big enough, it could even repair him from that.  It was hard to believe, or it should have been, and yet he found that he did not doubt it.

“But, wait,” he said.  “If you…I mean, if you spread all around my body, to protect me and everything, then…would you still be able to come out of me when I was ready for you to do that?”

“Indeed,” the V-42 replied.  “If you chose to have us remove ourselves from you, we could merely agglomerate once more in your gastrointestinal tract to be regurgitated as we described previously.  It is even possible, though it would be inefficient, for us to leave your body through the surface of your skin.  But the skin is comparatively impermeable, so that would require greater effort.  But we coordinate ourselves in any situation, so it would not be an absolute issue.”

Albert was distracted for a moment by a new vision of himself again standing over a bowl in some imaginary hotel, but this time with his arms stretched out over the container, and with his hands and forearms producing an oozing mass of the light-orange shampoo, which dripped down from them into the bowl.  It seemed it some ways less horrific than the vomiting notion, but in others it was deeply unsettling.  He wasn’t sure which he would prefer.

Then again, it had written “if you chose to have us remove ourselves from you”.  Maybe he could just leave it.  After all, if it could keep repairing him from inside, was there any reason for him to keep using it as a shampoo?  Maybe he was reading too much into its words, but it seemed like he could simply carry the stuff around within him.  Then he need never worry about anyone ever trying to steal it.

Would he be willing to do that?  It felt a bit selfish.  Actually, it felt very selfish.  He might feel like a horrible person for hoarding this material that could repair and correct illness and aging—that could even, apparently, correct gunshot wounds.  There were very sick people out there in the world, and many of them—probably the vast majority of them—were entirely innocent and deserved to be healthier.

But maybe…maybe even if he kept the stuff with him, within him, if what it said was true—if it could pull itself back together at will—then he could produce it when and if someone needed something.

He shook his head again.  He was in danger of developing some kind of messiah complex, he thought, and he had more urgent things to think about at the moment, anyway.

As if to highlight that point, the V-42 wrote, “He is arriving on this street.”

Albert found himself almost asking “Who is arriving?” but he quickly realized there was only one person the V-42 could mean.

“Walter’s here?” he asked.  “That…that seems like it’s too fast.”

“He had already begun his journey before we were able to tell you about it,” the V-42 pointed out.  “And traffic on Saturday morning is, apparently, much lighter than during the week.”

Albert had to admit the V-42 was right.  “Damn,” he said, still feeling a little awkward swearing in front of the shampoo.  Then he asked, “Wait, won’t Walter see my car and know that I’m still here?”

“You parked on the street last night, did you not?” the V-42 asked.

Albert blinked, surprised again, but then he thought back and said, “Yeah, I guess I did.  The housemates apparently had a friend over or something, and I didn’t want to box anybody in.  How did you know?”

“We have a presence on your body, Albert,” the V-42 said.  “Though it is rarely important for us to pay much attention, we are aware of some facts about your environment, and it was clear that you walked farther to get here after your car stopped than you usually do.  Also, does Walter know what make and model of car you currently drive?”

Albert hadn’t thought about that, but he had to admit that Walter probably did not know what type of car he drove.  Though they had met at the restaurant recently, Albert had arrived well before his friend, and he had parked farther away.  He supposed Walter might have noticed what kind of car he got into when they left, but the man had not seemed to be in his best mental state, and the added alcohol he’d had with lunch probably hadn’t helped things.

Walter knew that Albert shared a house with other people—he could have sworn he’d told him—so even seeing the cars in the driveway wouldn’t put him off.  He knew that Albert lived in the back of the house; Albert was almost sure he had told Walter that.  Sure, he hadn’t been to the house before, but it wouldn’t be hard for anyone to figure out where to look for him.

He looked at the bigger cup with the V-42 and said, “What do you think I should do?”

The V-42 replied, “We can only present you the options as we see them.  We work for you, not the other way around.  As we see it, one choice is to make your presence known and try to dissuade Walter, with or without opening the door.  You can call the police, of course, or attempt to locate a weapon to defend yourself and us, in case Walter becomes irrational and breaks in, or in case you allow him in and then he becomes irrational.  Or, you can swallow us, and those other options will still be available, but you will have protected us from theft, and we will be able to protect you from violence.”

Albert thought that was a pretty good and succinct summary of the situation.  As for finding a weapon in case he needed to defend himself, that was an issue.  He’d tried to think about weapons during his moment of free-floating anxiety a few minutes ago, and though he hadn’t been trying very hard, he knew that there simply wasn’t much he could use, certainly not against a gun.  He had no firearms of his own, nor did he have anything like a baseball bat.  He didn’t even have a serious kitchen knife, because he didn’t have an actual kitchen.

“He is approaching,” the V-42 wrote.

Albert felt his tension rise, and he could almost hear his pulse in his ears, which made it difficult when he tried to listen to hear Walter walking toward the rear of the house.  Of course, he was unlikely to hear such a thing even without internal distractions.  The bathroom was relatively cut off and borderline soundproof to the outside world.

“Where is he?” he asked.  He glanced around as if he expected Walter to be hiding somewhere in the bathroom with him.

“He is approaching the front of the house,” the V-42 wrote.  Then it went on, “He appears to know not to go to the front door, as he is already moving toward the side of the house.  We presume there is a visible path there?”

Albert was slightly surprised that the V-42 didn’t already know that, but then he realized that it didn’t actually have eyes, it just judged things—so it said—by relative locations of members of itself.  So, it would easily have known that he had parked on the street the evening before based on his body’s movement, but it wouldn’t, for instance, know the make, model, or color of his car itself.

“Yeah, there is,” he replied.  “It’s actually pretty obvious.”

“He is coming around the rear of the house,” the V-42 wrote, making Albert realize that his own assessment of the situation was lagging behind real time.

He felt his chest tighten up.  What was he going to do?  He didn’t think Walter would just try to kick his door in; that would surely rouse the others who lived in the house.  Then again, Walter had brought a gun, so maybe he thought he didn’t need to worry about such things.  And the rear of the house was entirely enclosed by high fences and some bushes, and it was not very big.  It was an old neighborhood, and hadn’t been built for the wealthy.  If there was even fifteen feet between Albert’s door and the fence that separated his yard from that of the rear-abutting property, he would be surprised.

His throat felt dry, but that was fine, because he didn’t want to speak loudly.  In a whisper, he began, “Where is he right…”

He didn’t need to finish the question, because he heard a light knock at his door, barely audible from his place in the bathroom, and the sound made him jump in place, even though he knew Walter was coming.

Then, after the knock, he heard a relatively restrained voice calling out, “Hey, Albert?  Are you still home?  Or have you already gone out on your chores?”

Albert might have been reading into things too much, but the tone of Walter’s voice seemed…disingenuous.  It was as though he was trying to sound casual and was overshooting the mark.  Something in his tone carried an aspect of attempted deception.

In any case, Albert kept his mouth shut, not wanting to answer.  He didn’t know what he was going to do.  If Walter kicked the door in, he didn’t think it could be done quickly.  He could call 911…

…no, wait.  He had left his cell phone in the other room.

He supposed he could close the bathroom door.  It had a lock, of course, but if Walter could break through the thicker outside door, the bathroom portal wouldn’t be a major obstacle.

He prepared to make as quiet a dash as he could into his main room, intending to stay low in case Walter tried to look in the relatively small windows.  But then he heard an odd sound, a sort of scratching, metallic, clinking sound, as if someone were rustling a set of keys in their hands and sometimes hitting the door with them.

“What is that?” he asked, trying to keep his voice down enough that it couldn’t possibly be heard through his outside door.  He pushed the bathroom door mostly closed, but not enough that he couldn’t hear the loudest of the scratching outside.  “What’s he doing?”

He hadn’t really intended these to be questions for the V-42 to answer, but nevertheless, it began writing on the cup, “He has knelt down, based on his body’s locations.  And based on his concentration and the movements of his hands, we believe his attempting to pick the lock on your door.”

This surprised Albert.  He wouldn’t have guessed that Walter even knew how to pick a lock, let alone that he would have any tools appropriate for such a task.  Of course, he supposed Walter might have tried to fashion something like paper clips into lockpicking tools, but that seemed as though it would be impractical, though he was only vaguely aware of the technology involved.

He supposed that someone as, well, “nerdy” as Walter might have become curious about lockpicking at some point in his life and read about how it was done.  He might even have bought the tools to do it.  Albert had to think there was somewhere on the internet that such things could be purchased.  But still, it surprised him.  It also made him a bit more nervous.  After all, Walter had left his house carrying not just a gun, but tools to pick locks.  He had clearly been intending to do what he was trying to do.

Yet, the V-42 has said that Walter had driven around erratically before heading more directly toward Albert’s place.  That seemed to imply indecision.  Maybe Walter had been struggling with his conscience at that time.  If so, it seemed he had overcome any qualms he’d been experiencing.

Albert had a moment to be grateful that, as a matter of habit, he always locked both the door handle lock and the deadbolt when he came inside his room.  That should at least double Walter’s necessary time to complete the process.

“How long do you think it’ll take him?” he asked, and he heard a tremor in his own voice.  He was apparently more frightened than he was allowing himself to admit.

“It’s difficult to say,” the V-42 wrote.  “Based on his level of stress and concentration, and some very slight muttering, he does not appear expert at what he is doing.  He is quite tense, probably more so even than you are, but that is not necessarily reassuring.  Creatures under a high degree of stress are more likely to do irrational things.”

Albert thought that was probably true.  Still, it reassured him to think that he at least had a moment.  Unfortunately, having a bit of extra time didn’t change his circumstances.

He tried to steady himself with a deep breath, but he feared getting lightheaded if he did that too often.  Finally, thinking there was little other choice, he asked, “So, you said you could make it so that I could swallow you without coughing or gagging or anything?”

“Yes,” the V-42 replied.  “We will even assist in the process of imbibing us, by actively making ourselves work our way down your esophagus if you swallow us.  Also, as we said, we can induce a flavor sensation of your choice, if you have a preference.”

Albert found that he couldn’t even think clearly about what he might want his shampoo to taste like when he drank it.  He tried to imagine it simulating the taste of Coca Cola, but then shook the thought out of his head, finding it a mere distraction.  So, he simply said, “It doesn’t really matter.  If I can swallow you without problem, and you can even make it happen faster, then I’m not going to worry about that.  Just…make it neutral, I guess, like water or something like that.”

“Would it be acceptable if we try to achieve a flavor such that we will be easier to swallow than water?” the V-42 wrote.

Albert blinked, surprised by the question, but he said, “Sure, that’s fine.”

He stood up.  As he did, the cup displayed the question, “Do we have your permission to spread throughout your body so that we can more speedily enact any repairs that become necessary?”

“Uh…yeah, sure, absolutely,” Albert replied, not liking to think about the possibility.  “That only makes sense.”

Given that the V-42 was still communicating with him via the larger plastic cup, Albert decided to leave that portion of the liquid for last.  He reached into the shower and took up the bottle of the original shampoo, with its HoG manufacturer logo, the V-42 brand label and the “Extra Body” indication.  He looked at it, trying not to think of what shampoo tended to taste like, based on the rare occasions when he’d accidentally gotten some in his mouth.

He figured it made sense to remove the entire top of the bottle rather than try to drink it through the little dispenser hole.  Even though the V-42 assured him that it could actively move itself and help speed up the swallowing process, he didn’t see any need to make it harder than it had to be.

He twisted the plastic bottle top counter-clockwise, repeating the action he’d performed to refill the bottle before.  The top rotated easily to the “left” by about ninety degrees before popping loose.  Albert looked at the inside of the cap and realized that he saw not even a bit of glistening residue of the shampoo, no evidence of liquid adhering to the edges of the dispenser hole.  He had used the V-42 that morning, and he assumed that, had it been normal shampoo, there would have been some of it sticking to the interior surfaces of the cap, but there was, as far as he could see, no trace of it.

He was fairly sure that he would have found no trace even with the most powerful microscope.

He looked at the open bottle in his hand, smelling the delightful odor of the V-42, looking at the orange-amber liquid, and trying not to think of it as anything soapy.

He listened for the sound of Walter working on the back door.  Though the noise was quite muffled, he could still hear intermittent scratching.

He was about to force himself to bring the bottle to his lips when a thought occurred to him.  Turning to look at the stuff on the sink, he asked, “Hey, once I drink…well, all of you, assuming I can do it…how are you going to communicated with me?  Or, well…will you be able to communicate with me?”  He thought it would be good for him still to get updates on what Walter was doing even after he drank the shampoo.

The V-42 wrote, “Once we are within you and spread out, if we have your permission, we can communicate with you directly in a number of ways.  We can, most straightforwardly, stimulate your auditory nerves to produce a voice that you will subjectively be able to hear.  We could also stimulate your optic nerves to produce written language that you would see.  Of course, no one else would be aware of these things, but we could communicate with you.”

Albert, still nervous, nevertheless found this reassuring.  “Okay,” he said.  “That sounds good.”  Then, quickly, he said, “You have my permission.”

He was mildly surprised when the V-42 wrote, “Would you prefer vision or hearing as the main mode of communication?”

Albert blinked, but he didn’t have to think too hard about which to choose.  “Hearing, I think.  I’m kind of happy with my better vision right now, I don’t want anything to get in the way, if you know what I mean.”

“Very well,” the V-42 responded.  “We will speak to you audibly if needed.  We will choose a neutral voice, unless you have a preference.”

“No, no, that’s good,” Albert said.  He heard a quick increase of the scrabbling at the door, fearing that perhaps his friend had already made it through the first lock.  However, a fumbling sound followed, and he thought, maybe, that Walter had dropped his lockpick.  He became worried that Walter would lose his patience and start kicking at the door.  It would be a risky move, of course, since the noise would be audible to neighbors and also, probably, to Albert’s housemates.  And with the deadbolt in place, Walter would have to kick hard enough to break that away from the frame.  Still, it was no high-security door, and concerted effort would certainly get through it.  And, if the neighbors came to see what was happening, well, Walter was armed, and he was not truly in his right mind.

Feeling rather desperate, Albert looked back at the bottle, and the liquid within it.  Muttering to himself, “Well…‘here’s lookin’ at you, kid,’” he brought the bottle to his mouth and forced himself to tip it up.

He was prepared for the flow of the liquid to be slow, and—despite reassurances—for it to taste like detergent.  He was surprised therefore  when the liquid within flowed to his mouth as readily as water or soda or juice, perhaps even more quickly.  In fact, it fairly launched itself into his mouth, and before he could even begin to prepare himself to cough or gag, he was surprised to find that it tasted wonderful.

If the smell of the V-42 had been one that was similar to his prior favorite shampoo but even more pleasant, then this taste was certainly better than any beverage he could recall drinking.  The closest thing he could think of was a salted caramel flavored iced coffee beverage he had once bought on a hot summer day, and which had combined many flavors that he really liked, the sweet, the pleasantly bitter coffee, and the savory essence of the salt—not enough to be unpleasant, but enough to add a zing, the way Gatorade was slightly savory.  It had been a nice, delicious, and refreshing treat, but this was even better.

The liquid was definitely not passively flowing down his throat.  It was far too fast for that.  It swooped down as if it had a will of its own—which, of course, it did.  Though Albert might have expected this to cause him to gag, it did no such thing.  He barely had to work his throat to swallow, but he certainly felt no difficulty doing so.  He could feel the liquid flowing down his esophagus and into his stomach, but it was a pleasant feeling, more like taking in a nice meal than drinking a liquid.

It took mere seconds for him to finish the bottle, and if anything, he was almost disappointed when it was over.  He was almost completely distracted from hearing Walter’s movements, or even from worrying about the threat he posed.  Instead, he turned toward the smaller cup on the sink counter and, putting the original V-42 bottle haphazardly back on its ledge in the shower, he picked up the cup.

It was, if anything, even easier and faster to drink this one.  When he was done, he looked at the bottom of the cup and saw that it was truly dry.  There was no trace of the thick, honey-orange liquid, not so much as a shimmer or a glint.  The cup might have been baking in an oven for an hour, it was so plainly lacking any surface liquid.

Albert, briefly distracted, reached for the bottle and looked inside it.  It might as well have just been molded at whatever factory it was from which it came, completely desiccated because of having recently been hot, liquid plastic itself.  The was no trace of fluid.

Shaking his head in wonder, Albert turned back to the bigger cup, the one on the inside of which he’d been reading the communications from the V-42.  There was nothing written on it now; the V-42 had apparently erased its latest message, presumably to make it easier psychologically for Albert to drink it.  He had to admit, that probably was a good idea.

He picked up the cup, worried despite reassurances that he was losing his connection with the stuff.  If Walter was his old friend—and that was a serious question, it turned out—then he almost felt that the V-42 was a new friend.  Quite apart from all the good it had done for his health, he had begun to enjoy interacting with it, though it had started only recently.  He truly hoped that it really would be able to communicate with him, even while it was hiding inside his body.

A slightly louder bit of scratching at his door accompanied by muffled sounds that were probably profanity brought Albert back to himself.  He took in a deep breath and sighed it out, and he brought the bigger cup to his lips.

He might have been deluding himself, but he thought that this cup of the V-42 tasted even better than the previous two portions and went down easier and faster.  In seconds, the cup was as empty as if it had just come from the package, and Albert put it down, almost mournfully, on the vanity.

Then, slightly surprising him, he felt a warmth in his belly, a bit akin to what might have followed taking a stiff drink on an empty stomach, but much less harsh, much more pleasant.  The warmth spread from there, outward in all directions, relaxing him as it went.  He guessed this must be the sensation of the V-42 speedily expanding throughout his body, to prepare in case he was attacked.  That possibility didn’t really catch hold in his mind for the moment, not in the face of the warm sensation spreading through him.

A portion of that wave spread upward through his chest and into his neck and head, moving faster than the rest of the wave.  It reminded Albert of the feeling of getting a good massage, a sort of glowing rush of relaxation that was so rarely encountered in adult life.

He began to feel a bit groggy—or, well, not exactly groggy, but certainly pleasantly but insistently sleepy.  He steadied himself with a hand on the side of the sink, and he carefully sat down on the toilet lid.  He blinked, trying to fight the urge to doze off, reminding himself that Walter was still at work on the door.  It seemed foolish to take a nap given the circumstances, but that concern was no longer one of fear; he found his anxiety was almost entirely gone.  The danger had become academic.  But still, he really ought not to…

A faint, rather distant and not quite distinct voice came into his ears, saying, “Do not worry, Albert.  This sleepiness is a side-effect of us intercalating ourselves into you.  There are more of us even than all the cells of your body, and we do not wish to cause disruption, especially to your nervous system.  It will be easier if you sleep through it.”

Albert realized, of course, that it was the V-42 speaking in his head, presumably manipulating his auditory nerves, as it said it would.  He got the impression that it wasn’t fully able to do its best communication in its current state—presumably not before it finished “intercalating” itself.

“But…but what about…about…Walter?” he muttered, only just able to keep his eyes open.

“Do not fear,” the indistinct voice said.  “This will only take a short while.  He will not finish unlocking even the first lock before we are done.”

The voice sounded so calm and confident that Albert took its words as true.  “Okay,” he said.  “Well, I’ll…”  He dozed off before he could finish the sentence.