by Jo Franklin
Gordon stared at Eddie.
Eddie stared at Gordon.
No one blinked.
I willed Gordon’s eyeballs to stay in their sockets.
I willed Eddie’s hands to stay at his sides.
The tension grew darker, more dangerous.
After a couple of zillion years, Eddie spoke.
“Whatever!” he said, and looked away. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”
Gordon the Geek pulled his eyeballs in, and the tension fizzled to almost nothing.
When tension disappears, it leaves a huge “What was that all about?” black hole.
The mission and our friendship had nearly been destroyed.
Gordon fumbled in his briefcase for a bunch of cables and connected the two laptops together as if everything was business as usual.
I raised an eyebrow at Eddie. He raised both eyebrows in return. He can’t do the one-eyebrow thing, but it was good to share solidarity eyebrows with someone.
I was going to miss him when I was gone. I wasn’t sure I’d miss Gordon.
“The data transfer will take another seven minutes and fifty-six seconds,” Gordon said in a normal voice, as if he hadn’t just reverted from being a bulging-eyed demon. “Where is the satellite? I have to figure out how to reverse the polarity before I connect it.”
It felt good to get out of my bedroom. I left the door open, hoping that the last shadow of tension would be gone by the time we got back. I led the way downstairs, ignoring the screaming coming from the kitchen, and out to the chasm of doom. The chasm was even darker than normal, but I could just make out the silver satellite dish in the gloom.
“That’s no good,” Gordon said. “A satellite dish has to be up high if it’s going to work. You know, near the roof or something.”
“Now you tell us,” Eddie said.
I couldn’t speak because my teeth were gnashing together uncontrollably. I’d faced death on that ladder for nothing.
“That would be the perfect spot.” Gordon pointed to the skinny section of wall outside my parents’ bedroom.
I still couldn’t speak. I turned to Eddie and raised my eyebrow again. This time the eyebrow quivered wildly.
“Okay,” he said. “But you owe me.”
Eddie might have a few disgusting personal habits, but he is the best friend anyone could wish for.
22
Communication—How to Do It
Jessie’s wailing filled the whole house. Gordon and I crept past the kitchen door.
“I can’t get it to work.” Mom sounded frazzled. “Call the phone company.”
“I could help them,” Gordon whispered.
“No! Not till we’ve sent our message to Kepler 22b.”
We were halfway up the stairs when Jessie screamed again. “The phone’s dead!”
“The phone and Internet come in on the same wire,” Mom said. “Pass me my cell phone.”
Maybe that random wire lying dead on the sidewalk wasn’t so random after all. I didn’t hang around to hear the rest of the conversation. I ushered Gordon upstairs, and it wasn’t long before Eddie joined us.
“Satellite dish in position,” he said. “Ladder out of sight.”
I gave Eddie a thumbs-up.
When Gordon is being geeky rather than freaky, he is very professional. It took him two minutes to connect his old laptop and the satellite dish (via a very long cable) to his communications device.
“What message do you want to send?” he asked.
My mind did what it always does when I’m asked a question under pressure. It turned stark-white empty.
“Well, Mr. Kendal?” Gordon put on his bored tone.
“S.O.S.?” I suggested.
“Are you in danger?”
“Not right now, but Jessie hasn’t tried to turn on the TV yet.”
“How about . . .” Gordon started typing. Kepler 22b. Alien waiting for transfer. Please collect me from 26 Beechwood Road. He looked over at me and raised his eyebrows above the frames of his glasses.
A few minutes earlier he was going to kill me, but now he gave me the solidarity eyebrows. He pointed at the Enter key and waggled his eyebrows at me.
For the first time ever, Gordon was inviting me to touch his laptop. Maybe he felt guilty about the whole demon-eyeball thing, or maybe he didn’t care about his old keyboard now that he’d moved on to the thin-crust laptop.
I rubbed my finger clean on my jeans and pressed the Enter key.
The laptop screen sprang into life. Streams of writing scrolled up and off the screen. As the words sped past, I could see they were in foreign languages. There were accents and weird letters all over the place.
Kepler 22b. Extranjero de espera para la transferencia. Por favor, me recoger a partir del 26 Carretera Beechwood.
Kepler 22b. Alien čekání na přenos. Prosím, sbírat mě z 26 Road Beechwood.
কেপলার 22b. স্থানান্তর এলিয়েন জন্য অপেক্ষা করছে. 26 Beechwood রোড থেকে সম্পর্কে সংগ্রহ দয়া করে.
Kepler 22b. Alien bíða flutnings. Vinsamlegast safna mér úr 26 Beechwood Road.
ケプラー22bは。エイリアン転送待ち。 26ぶなの道から私を収集してください
“What’s happening? Where did my message go?”
“Out there.” Gordon pointed through the window at the starlit sky. “In every language known to man. German, Tagalog, Cantonese. I put your message through a universal translator. Once it’s done the languages, it will move on to Morse code, semaphore, and pictograms.”
“Gordon, you’re a genius!” I wanted to kiss him, but with his hang-ups I didn’t dare risk it. I gave him a thumbs-up instead.
My message streamed up the laptop screen in languages I didn’t recognize. He’d even translated it into Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“Bean?” Dad called up the stairs. “Can you come down here a minute?”
His voice seemed to come from a different world. A world I no longer belonged to.
“Daniel Kendal!” As soon as he said my real name, I knew he was serious. I didn’t want to leave the Supreme Communications Device, but if Dad came upstairs, he’d want to know why a cable was going into the front bedroom.
“Keep communicating as long as possible,” I said to Gordon and Eddie, then dashed downstairs to face my human family.
“Do you have anything upstairs that might be . . . well, shady?” Dad said. He had a lot of worry lines across his forehead. “I know Eddie says his dad’s business is strictly legit, but I want to double-check.”
I didn’t know whether communicating with an alien species was questionable, but even if it was, I wasn’t going to tell Dad about it.
“No,” I said.
“Has Ed brought anything over that might be stolen?”
Did he mean the thin-crust laptop?
“Because I’ve called the police, and I don’t want to get Ed into trouble.”
“The police?” I said in my most innocent voice.
“Some idiots stole our satellite dish and pulled down the telephone wire while they were at it. We have no TV, no phone, and no Internet. All communications are cut off, except for cell phones.”
That wasn’t strictly true.
Normally Dad would have been impressed by Gordon’s invention, but I couldn’t share it with him right now. I’d tell him all about it when it was time to say goodbye.
Suddenly I felt a thick lump in my throat. When I blasted off for Kepler 22b, I’d leave everything behind. Everything and everyone.
“Dad, something’s happening!” Jessie yelled.
We went into the family room. Jessie was standing in front of the TV with a remote control in each hand, zapping them furiously in turn.
“I had something just now,” she said as she zapped.
The TV screen buzzed with black-and-white fuzziness. Then it cleared, and a stream of writ
ing scrolled up endlessly. A stream of writing in every language on Earth.
“I think you should turn it off.” I jumped in front of the screen. I wasn’t sure how good Jessie was at languages. She might recognize “Beechwood Road” in Afrikaans.
“Get out of the way!” She shoved me just as the last line of foreign language disappeared off the top of the screen.
The TV started bleeping.
-.- ..---.. -. . . . -. / ..--- -..--- - ---. . .
That sort of thing.
“Sounds like Morse code,” Dad said.
“Turn it off! Turn it off! It’s going to explode!” I reached for the power button. In the moment before the screen blacked out, a picture flashed onto the screen.
A live picture of a geeky kid with thick glasses peering into a computer screen.
Gordon the Geek had left his webcam on.
23
Too Close for Comfort
“What was that?” Jessie kept zapping the remotes.
“Just static,” I said.
“It wasn’t static. It looked like a person.”
“You’re hallucinating,” I said. “You’ve got your friends on the brain, so you imagined seeing them on the screen.”
“I don’t have any friends who look like that. But you do.” She jabbed my chest with a remote control.
“Kids, kids. Please. We’re all having a bad day. Don’t take it out on each other.” Dad took the remotes out of Jessie’s hands. “There’s clearly a problem here, so let’s calm down and find something else to do.”
“But, Dad—” Jessie began.
“But nothing,” Dad said.
Jessie didn’t say anything. She narrowed her eyes at me and set her Random Mood Generator to Psycho.
“I thought you said the satellite dish was missing.” Mom came into the room, her hands on her hips, tiredness on her face.
“It is,” Dad said.
“Not anymore,” Mom said.
While Dad and Jessie followed her out the front door, I raced upstairs.
“They’re onto us. Disconnect, quickly,” I said to my two friends, who sat mesmerized by the message scrolling up the screen on a continuous loop.
Gordon pulled out the wires and shoved his circuit board under the bed.
“I’m telling you, it wasn’t there before.” Dad’s voice came from the downstairs hallway.
“Well, it’s there now.” Mom closed the front door. “And Timmy’s playhouse has been trashed. We’ll have to put it back together in the morning.”
Eddie and I dashed into my parents’ bedroom. Eddie reached out the window and replaced Gordon’s cable with the disconnected TV cable.
The message had been sent and the components of Gordon’s communications device were separated. TV would be restored downstairs, I hoped. The only problem was the dead phone wire. I couldn’t do anything about that. I was sorry, but sometimes there are casualties on a mission.
“Dad says the police are on their way,” I said. “That laptop isn’t stolen, is it?”
“No!” Eddie said. “At least I don’t think so.” He tried to grab the thin-crust laptop, but Gordon got to it first.
“Mine!” Gordon said.
Eddie didn’t argue.
“Okay by me, Gordon my friend. I’m out of here just in case. Dad says it’s best not to be on first-name terms with the police.”
The doorbell rang.
Eddie threw open the window and was shinning down the drainpipe before I could stop him.
“Are you leaving that way too?” I asked Gordon.
“I prefer to use the door,” he said.
“What about the police?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“What about the laptop?”
“Eddie says it isn’t stolen.” Gordon shrugged. “And they’re looking for a satellite dish, anyway.”
I went downstairs with him, just in case the police didn’t see it his way.
24
The Chosen One
I took a deep breath and opened the door, expecting to be arrested immediately. But it wasn’t the police.
It was a crowd of weird-looking strangers.
“That’s him!” A woman with frizzy vermilion hair and long, shabby clothes pointed at Gordon. “Take me with you!” She threw herself at our feet.
Gordon edged backward as the woman pawed at his sneakers.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Kepler 22b. Take me with you.” The woman clasped her hands together as if in prayer. “I beg you!”
“Seems like the message worked,” Gordon said.
I wasn’t so sure. It was clear the message had gone somewhere. But had it reached Kepler 22b? The woman lying on our path didn’t look like a Keplerite to me.
“That’s him! That’s him!” Two more weirdos ran toward us. One had stringy gray hair and a long gray beard. His hair was so long that the ends of it had been knitted into his droopy sweater. A small woman skipped by his side. She wore a faded patchwork skirt and strings of brightly colored beads around her neck.
“Get up, Myrtle,” the man said to the horizontal woman. “Move aside so we can get closer to our savior.”
Whatever result I expected from sending the message to Kepler 22b, this wasn’t it. These people couldn’t be aliens. For starters, they were too short. And if they had been adult Keplerites, surely they would have figured out how to get back to Kepler 22b on their own.
“I think there’s some mistake,” I said.
“No mistake! No mistake!” the patchwork woman singsonged. “This is 26 Beechwood Road, isn’t it?” She skipped forward and twirled around so that her beads swung out in all directions. She made me feel dizzy.
Just to be sure, I asked, “Are you an alien?”
“No, no, no!” The woman clasped her hands to her mouth and crouched down in a huddle of quivering patchwork. “I’m not worthy,” she said.
“We are the Returned,” the man announced. He opened his arms wide and looked up at the night sky. “The superior species returned us to Earth.”
“Heavens forgive us. We were not worthy,” Horizontal Myrtle said, tears in her eyes.
“I think we’ve got a case of alien abductees,” Gordon said, trying not to move his lips.
I thought we had a case of wackos.
“I don’t get it,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
“They were abducted by aliens and then returned. Or think they were,” Gordon said. “They must have picked up our message, and now they want to go back to Kepler 22b with you.”
No way! The Keplerites or some other alien species had rejected them. If they came with me, I might get mistaken for a Returner and be rejected as well.
A silver RV pulled up on the other side of the road. It had blacked-out windows and a satellite dish on the roof.
Beardie Sweater and Patchwork Woman snapped out of their dreamy trance.
“It’s the others!” Patchwork Woman gasped.
“Quick, Myrtle!” Beardie Sweater shouted. “The others mustn’t get credit for finding the first alien on Earth. Grab him!”
Horizontal Myrtle lunged forward, her purple fingernails as sharp as talons.
“But I’m not an alien,” Gordon protested, cowering.
“We saw you,” Myrtle hissed. “And so did the superior species. When they arrive, we will be waiting with you.”
“You’ve got the wrong kid,” Gordon said, fixing his terrified eyes on me. The problem with phobias is they trump every other human emotion, and Gordon didn’t want these hairy weirdos to touch him. I knew what he was going to say next. “He’s the—”
I clapped my hand over his mouth, dragged him back into the house, and slammed the door on Myrtle’s hissing face.
25
When Is a Friend Not a Friend?
“What did you do that for?” I shouted.
Gordon pulled out a disinfectant wipe and swiped it over his mouth.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” he said.
“You were going to hand me over to those maniacs!” I said.
“They want to go to Kepler 22b with you.”
“Do you really think I want to go to Kepler 22b with them?”
The doorbell rang again.
“Are you going home or what?” I said. “I think your friends are waiting for you outside. Maybe you’ll get home alive.”
“They are not my friends,” he said. “Anyway, they want the real alien. They want you.”
“No!” I stabbed Gordon in the chest with an angry alien finger. “They want the four-eyed geek who beamed his image across the airwaves along with my serious message.”
“Don’t touch me!” Gordon clutched his briefcase to his chest as he shrank away from me. “I just want to go home and install my software.”
Typical! Gordon didn’t care if those nutcases ripped me apart as long as no one touched him. He didn’t care about anything except his crazy hang-ups and getting it on with his thin-crust laptop.
Mom and Dad appeared in the hallway.
“Excuse me, boys. That’ll be the police,” Dad said.
“Go in the kitchen and find something to eat,” Mom said. “Then I’ll drive you home, Gordon. Those satellite thieves might still be in the area.”
Mom didn’t have a clue that the real satellite thieves were in the kitchen or that we were no longer friends. I couldn’t forgive Gordon for pointing me out to the weirdo Returners.
Gordon helped himself to a drink of water. He’d never drunk or eaten anything at my house before. I knew he just wanted to look at something besides me.
Jessie stormed in from the family room, her Random Mood Generator still on Psycho.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said to Gordon. “I saw you on TV earlier.”
