by Adam Rex
“So,” said the Boov, wiggling his legs, “what have I to call you?”
I thought a moment. He wasn’t calling me Tip. Only friends called me Tip.
“Gratuity,” I answered.
J.Lo stared. After exactly too long a pause he said, “Pretty,” and looked away.
Whatever, I thought. I turned the key in the ignition, and the car growled to life like a sleepy polar bear. All those new hoses and things began shaking and flapping around. I was about to learn that, after J.Lo’s modifications, the ignition switch was about the only thing that still did what it was supposed to do.
The gas pedal was now the brake pedal. The brake pedal opened the trunk. The steering wheel made the car float up and down. To go left or right you tuned the radio. That was just as well, we weren’t going to be able to pick up any music anyway, but then I made the mistake of popping in a tape and our seats flipped backward.
We lay there for a minute, staring at the roof.
“I could hum,” said J.Lo.
“Shut up,” I suggested.
The parking brake shot the wiper fluid. The wiper knob opened the glove box. Pulling the air freshener honked the horn, and pressing the horn made the hood catch fire.
“Hold on! Hold on!” shouted J.Lo, running out the door. The hood yawned open and belched a fireball into the sky. J.Lo dove into his toolbox, threw what looked like an aspirin into the flames, and suddenly the car was covered in two feet of foam.
It took about a half hour to clean off the foam. It was cold and smelled like dessert topping.
“You know,” I said as we prepared once again to leave, “I don’t know if this is going to work anyway. There isn’t much gas left, and I don’t know where we could still buy some. Come to think of it, I’m not sure my money is even worth anything anymore.”
J.Lo smiled. “Ah. I to show something.”
He crouched by the gas tank and snaked a length of hose inside it. Then he sucked on the end, which was gross, and soon a trickle of gasoline dripped out. He caught a few drops of it in this weird machine. It looked like a balance, with small glass vials on both sides and some kind of computery thing in the middle. Then he let the hose fall, and gas spilled out onto the chewed pavement.
“Hey! You’re wasting it!”
“It does not to matter,” said the Boov. “Look.”
He fiddled with the computer, and the whole thing hummed. Then, as though its plug had been pulled, the little vial was emptied of its gasoline. I couldn’t tell where it went.
“Nice trick,” I said. “Now it’s all gone.”
J.Lo ignored me, and a second later the bottom of the other vial filled with gas from I didn’t know where.
“Wait. What just happened?”
The Boov grinned. “I did to teleport the fuel fromto one place and the other.”
“Teleport? Teleport? That’s amazing! You guys can teleport things?”
J.Lo’s smile fell a little. “Some things,” he said.
“But…” I said, missing the point. “How does that help us? We still need more gas.”
J.Lo’s smile widened.
“Feedback loop,” he said.
“Feedback loop?”
“Feedback loop.”
We just stood there, looking at each other. A crow cawed in the distance.
“Are you gonna make me ask, or—”
“The computer, it changes up the gasoline into computer datas. A long code. We to transmit the code, the gasoline, but only a little bit. Not all.”
“Not all,” I repeated.
“But…herenow is the trick. The trick is, we are to fooling the computer into thinking we have to teleported it all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But we have not.”
“Sooooo…”
“So we are keeping most the gasoline on the one side, and to fooling that it is all on the other side, so the stupids computer duplicates the gasoline for to fill the cup. Like copying a file. Thento we are sending it back the others way, thens back another time, and back and back. Like so.”
J.Lo fiddled again, and again there was the hum. What happened next looked like one of those time-lapse films where you watch a flower grow. Both of the vials buzzed and filled quickly with liquid. There was a hundred times more gas than when he’d started.
For a moment my brain wouldn’t let me believe what I’d seen. But then, I was getting pretty used to seeing unbelievable things by this point, and I snapped out of it.
“You made gasoline,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You just…like…cloned some gasoline!”
“As you say.”
“This is incredible!” I shouted. “You guys can teleport! You can clone things! You could, like, teleport to France and leave a clone of yourself behind to do your homework!”
The Boov frowned. “Everybodies always is wanting to make a clone for to doing their work. If you are not wanting to do your work, why would a clone of you want to do your work?”
“Okay, fine,” I said. “But you can teleport. You can go anywhere! Why are we driving?”
J.Lo really scowled now. This seemed to be a touchy subject for him.
“Boov cannot to teleport. Humans and Boov cannot be teleported, can not to be cloned.”
“But you just—”
“Impossible. Gasoline can to be teleported and cloned because it is all the sames, all mixed up. Complex creature like the Boov is not all the sames. Even simple creature likes the human is not alls the same.”
“Hey—”
“The teleporter computer does not to have to know what order whichto arrange the new gasoline. Does not matter. But for Boov and humans, matters.”
I was finally getting it. “You mean—”
“If Gratuity teleports, the computer cannot to keep track of all the molecules. Gratuity comes out a mixed-up puddle of Gratuity.”
“Oh.”
“Like a Gratuity milk shake, fromto the blender—”
“Okay, all right,” I said, raising my hands. “I get it.”
Again we fell into an uncomfortable silence. Then J.Lo sat down to make more gasoline, with Pig purring around his feet.
“Hey…did I…are you mad?” I asked, wondering immediately why I did. “What’s wrong with you?”
J.Lo sighed. It made a crackly sound.
“The Boov have tried to fix this problem for long time. For…” He raised his eyes like he was doing math. “For an hundred of your years,” he said finally.
“Jeez.”
“As you say.”
After a while we were on our way. The new controls for Slushious were hard to get used to, but I’m a quick study. J.Lo only gritted his teeth and clutched the door handle for about the first fifteen miles, so afterward I had to throw in an occasional dip or wild turn to keep him guessing.
“I’m a really good driver,” I said after a particularly daring and unnecessary dive. J.Lo bleated something in Boovish that I hoped was a prayer. Or a curse.
Later a stray dog crossed our path, and I hit the brake, or rather the gas, a little too hard. J.Lo sailed forward and hit his head on the dash with a wet slap.
“Seat belts,” I said.
“Perhaps I could also to drive from time to time,” said the Boov.
“Nope. Sorry. Not your car.”
J.Lo rubbed his head. A bruise had already formed, swirling and changing color beneath his skin like a mood ring.
“I rebuilded it,” he said. “Is like half mine.”
I thought about this.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “but it wouldn’t be legal, you driving it. You don’t have a license.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Of course.”
A long silence fell between us. It was like a whole extra person in the car, this silence, watching me expectantly. I started to imagine the silence was Billy Milsap, this kid from my grade who always sat near me in every class. He never said a word, never
answered a question, and every time I glanced at him he was already staring at me. No smile, not even the good sense to look away when I caught him. The silence in the car was an invisible Billy Milsap, hunched like a goblin in the backseat. Like any silence, it wasn’t really silent at all, but had the same thick drone of Billy’s mouth breathing. And the more time passed, the bigger it got. Also, incidentally, like Billy Milsap.
When the silence hung around through the whole state of Delaware, and Billy Milsap had grown so large he was spilling out the open windows, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I wish there was music,” I said a little pointedly.
“I am sorry,” said J.Lo.
I didn’t really like it when he apologized.
“At least you guys didn’t blow up all the roads,” I said. There had been a long stretch of broken asphalt, but now the highway was smooth again.
“The Destruction Crews, they only are exploring roads—”
“Exploding roads. Not exploring.”
“Yes. They only are exploding roads around the big humanscity. I did not understand whyfor they explode roads, on account I was not knowing about the humanscar that roll.”
He said “roll” like it was something cute.
“What were you doing out there by the MoPo anyway?” I said. “All by yourself.”
“There was there an antenna farm.”
“An antenna farm? There’s no such thing.”
“A…” He searched for the right words. “A big field filled with the tall antenna towers. For to your radios. I was to sent to modify the towers, for Boov use.”
We were passing through an abandoned city, past empty buildings like mausoleums.
“The job…” J.Lo continued, “it took too long. I missed my ride. So Gratuity nicely gives me the ride.”
I didn’t really like him complimenting me. And I got the impression he wasn’t telling me everything about his work. But then I wasn’t exactly sharing either.
“Maybe we could play some car games,” I said.
“Car games?”
I tried to think of a game he might understand. I said, “I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with…G.”
“Sausages,” guessed J.Lo.
So we didn’t play any car games.
Strange as it sounds, we actually started talking about old TV shows.
“What was the one,” said J.Lo, “the one onto where the man wears a dress?”
I frowned. “You’re going to have to give me more to go on,” I said. “There’s kind of a long tradition of men wearing dresses on television.”
“Milton Berle!” J.Lo shouted, remembering. He laughed—I think it was laughing—for two whole minutes. I had no idea who he was talking about.
“Or the shows where to the men wear helmets and run at each other?”
“Sounds like football,” I said. Or war footage, I thought.
“Yes. Also very funny.”
“Have you watched all this TV since the Boov came here?” I asked.
“Oh, no. The Boov have to been getting the Smekland shows for long time. Many years. The signals travel through the space and we catch them on Boovworld. Do you know Gunsmoked? Or I Am Loving Lucy?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Did you to see the one where Lucy try to make the Ricky put her into the big show?”
He laughed again, like a trombone under water.
“Ah,” he said finally. “Wicked funny.”
There was that word again.
“Did you guys learn English from watching our television?”
“No,” said J.Lo. “We had tutors. But you could to understand some of the shows, even without the humanswords.”
“Oh.”
“Do you know what is interesting?” the Boov asked. “Before we to came to Smekland, I thought it would to be funnier. And more exciting, also. All I knew was fromto the television signals, so I thought it was always tripping on footstools and car chasing. It is not quite liketo the television, is Smekland?”
“No…” I said, “life isn’t like TV. On TV, everything gets wrapped up quickly. On TV there are heroes who save the world from people like you.”
I squeezed the wheel, stared at the long ribbon of yellow ahead of us. I’d sucked all the air out of the car. My stomach tightened a little as J.Lo glanced at me, then looked quickly away.
By the time we stopped for the night, Billy Milsap was as big as an ocean liner.
I chose a rest stop for our campsite. It was a little bit of human normalness that I could cling to. We could have stopped to sleep in a town, maybe even managed to get into a deserted motel. But then there would have been all of the gray empty streets and buildings surrounding me, and I didn’t like the way they already looked like ruins, like monuments to some briefly rich but now-dead civilization. At a rest stop we could almost have been any two motorists pulling over after a long day on the road.
So we parked at the James K. Polk Rest Area.
“What did that sign to say?” asked J.Lo. It was first thing he’d said in hours.
“‘James K. Polk Rest Area,’” I said. “We’re going to rest here.”
J.Lo’s eyes darted about as we hovered up to a squat little building. “Can we to do that? We are not James Kaypolk.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind.”
It turned out to be a really good place to stop. Apparently, no one had thought to loot a rest area, and the vending machines were fully stocked with candy, gum, toaster pastries, Blue Razzberry Nums, orange crackers filled with cheese so yellow it was almost a light source, peanuts, L’il Tasties, Extreme Ranch Chips, Extreme BBQ Pork Rinds, Noda (the Soda Substitute), and mints. J.Lo was only interested in the mints, so I would have the rest to myself.
“How does the food to come into the out?”
I winced. “Well, normally you have to put some money into it. But I don’t really have much.”
“And I am broken.”
“Broke.”
“Broke.”
J.Lo fetched his toolbox, which I was now convinced had everything in it, and produced something like a spray can, if spray cans were shaped like kidneys.
“Stand away,” he said.
The kidney can exhaled a fine blue mist that smelled like coffee. J.Lo coated the Plexiglas front of the vending machine, and stepped back to admire his work.
“What now?” I asked.
“We to wait,” said J.Lo as the Plexiglas began to steam.
I said that was fine. I had to use the restroom anyway.
“Yes,” said J.Lo, following me to the ladies’ room door. “I have also to do this thing.”
“Whoa,” I said, blocking the doorway. “You can’t come in here. This is the girls’ room.”
Even as it came out of my mouth, I knew it sounded dumb. Dumb, I thought, and maybe even wrong.
“You…you are a boy, aren’t you?” I asked. “I mean, don’t take that the wrong way or anything—”
“J.Lo is a boy, yes.”
I let that go. “So…you Boov have boys and girls…just like us?”
“Of course,” said J.Lo. “Do not to be ridicumulous.”
I smiled a wan little smile. “Sorry.”
“The Boov are having seven magnificent genders. There is boy, girl, boygirl, girlboy, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.”
I had absolutely no response to this.
“I’m going to go to the restroom now,” I said finally. “You use that one, over there.”
J.Lo pattered off to the boys’ room. He paused at the door, looking at the little man painted on it. A second later he produced some kind of pen from his toolbox, drew six more legs on the man, and went inside. I pulled the girls’ room door shut behind me.
The bathroom was pitch black, except for a small slit of a window framing the pink moon outside. The air was stale and thick. It wrapped itself around me, and I wore it like a mummy. It was nice to be alone for a moment. But I didn’t dwell o
n it; I was all business. I didn’t stare for too long at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t cry or anything. I was okay. I was excited about getting to Florida. Beaches. Fun in the sun. Happy Mouse Kingdom was there. Mom had always loved Happy Mouse Kingdom.
After a while I washed my hands and splashed my face, then rejoined J.Lo outside.
He was standing in front of the vending machine, eating mints. The front had almost completely evaporated.
“I don’t suppose you want any of the other stuff,” I said, waving my hand at the junk feast awaiting me.
J.Lo answered through loud crunches. “No. Mints.”
“You…can’t just have mints. Not that it makes any difference to me—”
He swallowed. “I did also find delicious, fragrant cakes in the Boovs’ room.”
It would be months before I understood he’d eaten deodorizers out of the urinals.
I would have liked to sleep outside and look up at the sky. The sky looked really great when nearly the entire country was blacked out. Of course, now it looked dangerous, too. I wondered if it would ever be just the night sky again, and not a black sea, full of sharks.
Anyway, there were too many bugs to sleep outside. I got an anklet of red bites around each ankle, and the mosquitos just swarmed around J.Lo. We spent the night in Slushious: me in the backseat, J.Lo and Pig in the front. I may be one of the few people alive who have heard the sound of a Boov snoring. It will haunt me to my grave.
The next morning we did our business quickly and got back on the road. Do you know how you can be around a smell for a long time, but you have to leave it and come back to even notice it’s there? When we were gliding back onto the interstate I noticed the smell.
Now, I have to admit that, at this point, I hadn’t bathed in four days. There hadn’t really been time. So I sniffed under my arms, but I was still very ladylike, thank you. I looked over at J.Lo. Pig was purring loudly at his feet, rubbing at his knees.
“Do you smell something?” I asked.
“I am smelling pine freshness,” he replied, looking up at the cardboard tree hanging from the mirror.
