by Lucas Flint
“Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to stop you from getting away with the Rubber Ball.”
Camel frowned. “Last I remember, you kicked me in the face. You mean I still tried to get away with it anyway?”
“You mean you don’t remember anything from the last two minutes or so?” I said.
“Nope,” said Camel, shaking his head. He rubbed his face. “But my face hurts. And you messed up my jacket. Also, you obstructed a government official’s duties, which is almost as serious as messing up my jacket. You’re going to get in big trouble when we get out of wherever we are.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “First, we need to figure out how to get back to Earth in the first place.”
“Wait, we’re not on Earth?” said Camel. He looked around again. “Guess you’re right. This doesn’t look like Los Congrejos, Texas. But where are we?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but then I heard that voice in my head again: Home.
I looked to the right. The Rubber Ball lay nearby. As I looked at it, I heard the sound of metal joints creaking and a mechanical, three-pronged claw came out of nowhere, reaching toward the Rubber Ball like a child reaching for a cookie. Instinctively, I fired a laser at the claw, which cut straight through it and caused the actual claw part to fall to the floor, while the rest of the arm retreated back into the darkness.
“Holy crap,” said Camel as he scrambled back to his feet, looking at the twitching claw with big eyes. “What was that?”
I ran over and picked up the Rubber Ball in my hands. Unlike before, I could sense its heart beating within it. It was also a lot warmer than the last time I held it, like the Rubber Ball’s intelligence had finally awoken to animate its ‘body,’ for want of a better term. It still couldn’t move on its own, of course, but now that it was in friendly territory, it didn’t need to.
“That was one of the aliens,” I said, turning to face Camel again. “Or at least one of their machines. We’re on their spaceship.”
Camel’s jaw dropped. He looked around again, this time with new understanding—and perhaps a little bit of fear—in his eyes. “We’re on an actual alien spaceship?”
Before I could answer, I heard a small click in the darkness. In the next instant, a loud, warbling sound came from the ceiling. It was so loud and sudden that both Camel and I jumped. I nearly dropped the Rubber Ball, but managed to retain my grip on it before it could slip from my hands. I looked around again, expecting another robotic claw to come out of nowhere to take the Ball from me, but I saw nothing to indicate that the aliens were going to try to take the Ball from me again.
“What’s that noise?” said Camel, raising his voice to be heard above the warbling. “It sounds like a toad croaking.”
All of a sudden, the warbling stopped. But things were only silent for a moment; a few seconds later, a voice spoke. It spoke somewhat haltingly, as if the speaker wasn’t used to speaking in English, though it was surprisingly understandable.
“Humans,” said the voice, which had a slight buzz to its tone. “Drop the Dread God’s brain or suffer the consequences.”
I glanced at the Rubber Ball. “You mean the Rubber Ball? Are you one of its followers?”
“Yes,” said the alien. “We have come to your planet from ours on a religious quest to rescue our dead god. His name is unpronounceable in your tongue, but the closest translation is the Dread God. He once ruled over your planet eons ago, before being slain by one of your ancestors, who then drove our ancestors off the planet. But now we have returned, just as the Prophecy states, and we shall restore our people to their rightful rule over yours.”
Camel and I exchanged frightened looks. Even though I’d already figured that that was what the aliens were trying to do, it was unnerving to hear those words come from an actual alien. I suspected it was using some kind of translation technology to communicate with us, or maybe it had somehow learned English. Either way, I doubted the alien would let us go very easily.
“Why did your dead god come to our planet in the first place?” I said. “I’d be interested in knowing that.”
“The legends do not say,” said the alien. “All we know is that we must have his brain back. It is the only way we will bring him back to life and restore his original rule over the planet.”
“Then why did you teleport us both up here?” I said, gesturing at myself and Camel. “Are you going to experiment on us or something?”
“It was an accident,” said the alien. “The ship’s transportation beam takes anything in its range. We came to the house when we heard the voice of the Dread God calling us. When you two came out with the Rubber Ball, you were caught in the beam’s radius by default.”
“Send us back down to Earth,” said Camel suddenly. He sounded a lot more nervous than me, though he did a good job at hiding it. “Send us back now or else.”
“First, give us the Dread God’s brain,” said the alien. “Then we’ll let you go. We don’t really need you anyway. It is of no loss to us if you two go back to your small world, though whatever peace you find there will be short-lived, because we’ve been busily at work creating a new body for the Dread God and all we need is his brain to complete it.”
I held the Rubber Ball closer to me, even though I could now feel it trying to pressure me to drop it instead of hold it. “A new body, huh? I don’t see it.”
All of a sudden, a monitor on the wall before us turned on. At first, it showed us nothing more than static, but the static cleared up quickly and displayed something that looked like it came straight from a horror movie.
At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. It was a vaguely humanoid thing, with the top of its head cut open. Its face was vaguely cow-like in appearance, while its hands and feet were a strange mixture of human members and hooves. It was hard to say how tall it was, but if I had to guess, it was probably twice as tall as me and three times as thick.
“Behold, humans,” said the alien again. “The new body of the Dread God, made from the flesh of your livestock and creatures from our world. It looks magnificent now, but once it has the Dread God’s brain within it, it will be truly divine and worthy of worship.”
Even though I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work, I also didn’t doubt that this alien was telling the truth. If they could get the Rubber Ball from me, they could resurrect their god—maybe even this very day—and start the beginning of the end of humanity itself.
“If you two wish to return to your world, then give us the brain of the Dread God,” said the alien. “As an added benefit, you can be the heralds of the Dread God’s arrival. Tell all of the humans on your planet that their lives will be changed, that the temples, churches, synagogues, and other places of worship will all be torn down and replaced with monuments to the Dread God’s power. If you do a good enough job, the Dread God may even spare your lives when he descends to your planet.”
I knew the alien was lying when he said that, because I could sense the Dread God’s hate in the Rubber Ball. The Dread God was trying to make me give up, to drop the Rubber Ball so he could get his body. And once he got his body back, Camel and I would be the very first humans to die, me especially, because the Dread God still remembered how I’d shot my lasers through him and hurt him in a way that he had not been harmed in countless eons. None of these feelings came as words to me, but I was able to interpret them anyway, because my exposure to the Rubber Ball had given me a connection to it in a way that no one else, not even his own worshipers, had.
Taking a step back, I said, “Maybe we’ll just get out of here on our own, with the Rubber Ball in our hands. Camel and I are not ordinary humans, you know. With our powers, we can fight through whatever you throw at us.”
“Yeah,” said Camel, nodding. He smirked and raised a hand. “With my gravity powers, I could probably make this ship crash straight down to the Earth. I once grounded an F-14 that way. I’d just need to find the power source and boom, a new UFO legend for ner
ds on the Internet to make conspiracy theories about.”
“Perhaps, but it would not be wise for you to do that,” said the alien. “We’re a bit higher off the ground than you think.”
The image of the Dread God’s new body was replaced by what I at first thought was a still image of outer space, like what NASA put out on the Internet. It showed Earth as seen from outer space, just beyond the atmosphere, which looked massive even from a distance. Clouds and continents covered the planet’s surface, dotting the oceans which covered so much of Earth’s surface.
But it wasn’t until Camel gasped in horror and covered his mouth with one hand that I understood that this was no mere image we were looking at. It was a live camera feed of the exterior of the spaceship, showing the Earth in real time.
“As you can see, we are currently beyond the atmosphere of your planet,” said the alien as casually as a tour guide pointing out an interesting historical artifact in a museum. “If you used your powers to down the ship—which we do not doubt you could do, for your powers appear formidable indeed—it would indeed crash, after burning up in the atmosphere on the way down, of course. Then it would crash and we would all die, but it is my understanding that humans don’t like dying, so I imagine you don’t look forward to it.”
“You’re lying,” said Camel, though he didn’t sound confident of that. “There’s no way we could be in space already. That would require your ship to go ridiculously fast, much faster than even our fastest rockets can leave the atmosphere.”
“Human technology is quite primitive,” said the alien. “We’ve had this sort of technology for eons, ever since the Dread God and his followers came to your world. But if you still choose to disbelieve me in defiance of the facts, then you may try to destroy our ship. After all, if we’re lying, then you should not fear dying when the ship crashes.”
I looked at Camel. The alien had called out his bluff. Camel no longer looked confident about crashing the ship. He looked scared to death, as if worried that the alien would eject us out of the ship and leave our corpses to endlessly float through space for all eternity.
“But we can avoid all of this if you would just give us the Dread God’s brain back,” said the alien. “We promise to send both of you back, unharmed, to your planet. You may even tell us where, exactly, you wish to go and we will ensure you get there safely, assuming you do not wish to go back to where we initially abducted you.”
“What if we say no?” I said.
“Then we’ll kill you here and now,” said the alien. “The only reason we haven’t, of course, is because you are holding the Dread God’s brain. We do not want to damage it, even though we know it is capable of healing itself from any injuries it sustains. Plus, we take no pleasure in murdering other creatures, even if they are our technological and biological inferiors, as you humans are. We are a merciful species ruled by a Dread God, after all. We always give our enemies a chance to cooperate before we annihilate them.”
I bit my lower lip. There didn’t seem to be any way out of this situation, at least none that I could see. Crashing the ship would just get us killed, and that was assuming we could make it to the ship’s control room in the first place. Giving up the Dread God’s brain would not work, either, because that would doom the whole of Earth to an alien invasion that humanity, in all honesty, couldn’t deal with. All of our options seemed equally bad, but they were also our only options.
Camel leaned over toward me. “Hey, kid, I think you should just give them the brain.”
I looked at Camel in disbelief. “What? Why?”
“Because, unlike you, I don’t have a death wish,” said Camel acidly. “I’m pretty fond of living, myself.”
“But if we give them the brain, humanity will be doomed,” I said. “We’d basically be sentencing humanity to slavery under a resurrected god who hates humans.”
“So what?” said Camel. “What part of ‘I don’t want to die’ do you not understand?”
“What part of dooming Earth to enslavement for all of eternity don’t you understand?”
Camel scowled. “Listen, kid, this isn’t like the comic books or movies you watch. We’re not actual heroes here and there’s no point in ‘heroically’ defying these aliens we can’t beat. I don’t know if your parents ever taught you this, but sometimes the ‘bad guys’ win and you just got to live with that. If you can survive the ‘bad guys’ winning, then you should.”
“My parents taught me not to be a coward,” I replied. “I’m a sidekick. We’re supposed to protect people, not throw them under the bus to save our own hides.”
“You’re the employee of a business, and a minimum wage one at that,” said Camel. “No different from a kid working at a fast food joint or a coffee shop.”
“But there is a difference,” I said. “You don’t need to understand it, but there is a difference.”
Camel threw up his hands. “Whatever! God, I hate you sidekicks. Just a bunch of stupid, naive kids who think they’re special because they get paid minimum wage to play dress up and beat up druggies on the streets. Just give me the brain so I can give it to them.”
Camel reached out toward the brain, but I stepped out of his reach. He paused and glared at me, and I glared right back.
“No,” I said firmly. “I am not giving the brain to you or to the aliens. And if you try to take it from me again, I’ll slice off your hands with my lasers.”
Camel looked like he was about to use his gravity powers on me, but then apparently thought better of it. He stepped back and said, “Fine, kid. Play the hero, if that will make you feel better. But when you and I are in hell together because the aliens value their god more than our lives, I’ll try to resist the temptation to say ‘I told you so.’”
I said nothing to that. I just held the Rubber Ball closer to my chest, keeping a careful eye on Camel. He may have promised to let me do what I wanted with the brain, but I didn’t want to let my guard down around him anyway.
“You humans are so quarrelsome,” said the alien suddenly. “Perhaps that is why you are so primitive. Once the Dread God unites all of humanity under his rule, you will see advances unlike anything you humans can even dream of.”
The alien spoke as if I’d already volunteered to give up the brain. And, to be honest, that was starting to seem like the only course of action available to me. It wasn’t like I could teleport Camel and I back to Earth. I would need to find a way to convince the aliens to send us back somehow, but as long as we had the brain, the aliens would never voluntarily send us back. Either I gave up the brain and we got to go home or the aliens killed us and took the brain anyway. Either way, the aliens would get the brain; and, like Camel said, if we chose the first option, we’d at least survive, at least until the Dread God enslaved all of humanity anyway.
But an idea occurred to me then, a third option. It was crazy and extremely risky, but at the same time, it was the only way we could get back to Earth without allowing the aliens to resurrect their god. I would need to act confident, though, because if I showed even the slightest sign of hesitation, it would not work.
I raised the brain up high above my head, even though I was sure the alien could see it no matter how I held it. “All right, alien. You’re going to send me and Camel back to Earth … with the Dread God’s brain still in our possession.”
Camel looked at me in confusion, while the alien said, in a tone of disbelief, “Why would we do such a thing? You are in no position to bargain, human. We are the ones who hold the power here. You are under our mercy.”
“No, we’re not,” I said, shaking my head. “We have the Dread God’s brain. And we can destroy it, here and now, if we need to.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” said the alien; I heard something that might have been fear in its voice. “The Dread God’s brain is—”
“Fallible,” I said. “I’ve already blasted it once. With enough force from my beams, I think I could destroy it outright. Or at least damag
e it to the point where your Dread God would be a vegetable if you put it in his skull, and I’m not sure that a vegetable would be very useful in conquering Earth.”
“We can stop you,” said the alien. “You are still under our mercy. If we even suspect you’re going to harm it—”
“Can you?” I interrupted. “My lasers are fast. Are you really willing to gamble the brain of your own god just to stop me? Suppose you aren’t quick enough to stop me before I destroy the brain. I can’t imagine your fellow worshipers would be very happy if you went back to your world and told them that you came this close to resurrecting their god, only to fail at the last minute because you were overly confident in your own abilities to save it.”
“Or bring back a half-sane god with you,” Camel added. “Can’t imagine they’d be very happy about that, either.”
“You are still bluffing,” said the alien, though the doubt in its own voice was obvious. “You would not dare to risk your own lives just to ensure the Dread God cannot return.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “Let me show just how serious I am, then.”
I fired a very weak laser blast at the brain. It struck the brain and left a small, barely noticeable burn on its surface, but I sensed the Dread God’s spirit within rage as hotly as an inferno at the pain. Clearly, the Dread God wasn’t used to being hurt, but I didn’t care about that, because at the moment the Dread God was under my mercy and couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
“You saw that, didn’t you?” I said to the alien. “I only left a flesh wound this time, but I would need to increase the power of my lasers only slightly to cause some permanent damage. Increase the power a little bit more and I might very well kill your god for good. So if you want your god to live—if you want there to be even a remote possibility of bringing him back someday—you’ll send me, Camel, and the brain back to Earth, exactly where you abducted us.”
I had no intention of actually destroying the brain, of course. I remembered what Nightbolt had told me, about how Rubberman’s life was tied to the Rubber Ball. I didn’t want Rubberman to die, but I also didn’t want the aliens to resurrect their god, either. I just had to hope that my little display of power was enough to convince the aliens to send us back to Earth with the brain. If it saw through my bluff, then we were screwed.
