by Paul Noth
“Well then, you have chosen badly!”
“You are not ‘not alarmed’?”
“If I was any more not ‘not alarmed’ I’d be leaping out the window!”
The giraffes looked perplexed. There were about twenty of them now. A medium-size one began whispering to the leader. The leader then raised his right front foreleg and lowered his face all the way down to it so he could make some adjustments to his Specs with his hoof.
Then he aimed the Specs at me. Jade light beamed out from the lenses and scanned me like a yogurt at the supermarket.
“It seems we have made an error in, ack, synthesizing,” the giraffe said, “due to, ack, conflicting information. We detected the communi-ack-cation center of a human. Yet our strongest readings from you are those of the very giraffe species you find so, ack, frightening.”
I started screaming again. I couldn’t help it.
“All right, ack,” said the giraffe. “Our apologies. We shall make our, ack, appearance something more familiar.”
Now all the giraffes aimed their specs at me and scanned me with jade light.
Then the giraffes began to change.
Their necks deflated—giraffe heads falling left and right—their bodies stood upright and shrank and they all grew beards and suddenly the many giraffes looked identical to . . . me.
“Ack. This is better?” asked the leader.
“NO!” I yelled. “Put some clothes on!”
More scanning, then whoosh! They wore clothes like mine. The beings all had bright, intelligent expressions, but otherwise they looked just like me.
“I’m sorry about the confusion, ack,” said the me who had been the giraffe who said “ack” a lot. “You are the one who called us, ack, here, right?”
“Uh,” I said, trying to remember.
“Ack, the rest of us will be able to talk as soon as we ack-ack-acclimate.”
These were the naturalists that Mr. Abernathy had told me about when he gave me the Flash Beacon. He had said they could get me out of trouble. I looked toward my grandma, who stood as still as the Roman emperor statues surrounding her.
The one I had started thinking of as “Ack” stepped toward Grandma.
“Is this the being who will be visiting us?” he asked.
“Visiting you?” I said.
“We don’t have enough time for this,” said a different one, finally able to speak. “We must not acclimate too much to these strange bodies.”
“Ack. Let us not be rude, Gubbins,” said Ack, and then turning to me said, “Please let me, ack, introduce myself. I am Gubbins. This is Gubbins, and Gubbins, and Gubbins, Gubbins, Gubbins . . .”
To save time I’m just going to tell you that they were all named “Gubbins” and they were all completely identical, except that one said “ack” a lot, which I took to be some sort of hiccup or speech impediment.
“So,” I said. “You guys are, like, aliens, right?”
“Well,” said Gubbins. “Isn’t everyone an alien in some context?”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “But you guys are, like, ALIENS, right?”
“Ack, yes,” admitted Ack. “Normally we, ack, wouldn’t have to ask who you are, but we can’t seem to get any clear reading on your identity.”
“Well,” I said. “My name’s Hap Conklin Junior.”
A murmur of excited recognition ran through the Gubbinses.
“As in the Hap Conklin?” said one. They all smiled as they remembered how famous the name was, and then frowned as they remembered why.
“Confirmed!” said one of the Gubbinses. “This is Hap Conklin.”
“Junior,” I said.
“Well,” said Ack, trying to smile but looking a little sick, “we are, ack, very familiar with your advertisements.”
“Those aren’t mine. They’re my father’s.”
“Ack, but we love your Panini robot,” said Ack.
“Those aren’t my products,” I said.
“Your advertisements are very annoying,” said another, still not understanding.
“No,” I said. “Not me. I’m Hap Conklin Junior. My father, Hap Conklin Senior, makes that stuff.”
The Gubbinses stared back with such blank incomprehension that for a moment my face looked normal on them.
“He’s the father,” I said. “I’m the son. We’re totally different guys. Understand?”
They looked at me as if I were from another planet. Finally one said, “Hap Conklin, I have been using your fitnessizing products.”
“They’re not mine!” I said impatiently. “I am Junior, he’s Senior!”
“Enough,” said the impatient Gubbins. “We have no time to waste on absurdities. May we borrow this human or not? We will pay one million US human Earth dollars, in cash.”
“Uh, borrow?” I said, following their eyes to my grandma. “For how long?”
“Our rate is always one million per unit per week.”
“A million what? Dollars?” I asked.
The Ack Gubbins nodded. “Ack.”
A million dollars and Grandma gone for a week. What a great deal! I could save Baby Lu and have enough time and money to free my family from Grandma’s control. I felt sure this would also keep us out of the Last Hexagon that Kayla was so worried about.
Still, I hesitated. Something about loaning my own grandma to shape-shifting space Gubbinses didn’t feel right.
But then I looked at her. I looked at the strange electric Taser rose with which she had so painfully zapped me. What was that line she had said to me a moment ago?
“There is a tide in the affairs of men,” I said. “Which taken at the something something leads straight on to the good stuff.”
“What does that mean?” said Gubbins.
“It means yes,” I said. “Take my grandma.”
“Sign here, please,” said Ack, holding up a document written in those crazy hieroglyphics. “Your finger will do.”
My finger wrote ink on that paper just as a pen would have. I signed my name.
“Transaction complete,” said Gubbins.
Grandma started to vanish, while in her place bound stacks of hundred-dollar bills materialized. The bill bands around each stack looked like this:
“We will return the being in a week,” said Gubbins. “We appreciate your business.”
“Please let us know how we may serve you better in the future,” said Gubbins.
All the Gubbinses but Ack began to fade.
“Ack, please,” said Ack, staring up at the sunlight. “Can’t we just stay, ack, a little longer?”
Gubbins looked at him in surprise. “You have acclimated far too much to this form! You forget yourself, Gubbins! You must come now.”
“Ack! Just a little longer,” said Ack, fading more slowly than the others.
“Now!” said Gubbins.
“So beautiful,” said Ack, staring up at the dome of the solarium.
“Don’t you have glass on your planet?” I asked him.
“Not the, ack, glass,” he said. “Your sun.”
“You don’t have a sun?”
“We do. But Gubbins hasn’t seen it for too long. Not for very many of your lifetimes. Ack. Such a long time ago.”
“How long ago?” I asked.
Ack looked at me.
“Yesterday,” he said, and then vanished.
CHAPTER 18
THE YOUNG MASTER
Yesterday? I thought as Ack disappeared. That didn’t make sense. If Gubbins hadn’t seen their sun in several of my lifetimes, how could they have seen it only yesterday? Could a single day on their planet last several human lifetimes?
And if so . . . for how long had I just loaned them Grandma?
“Wait!” I yelled. But Gubbins was long gone. Several questions now bothered me at once. There had been so many Gubbinses, but how come it now seemed like there had been only one? How could so many different beings all have the same name? And why hadn’t Gubbins been able to understan
d the concept of my dad and me being different people?
I realized that Kayla would know the answers.
I ran to the carved wooden trunk and opened the lid. But Kayla and Baby Lu were not inside. Instead, there were twenty more bound stacks of hundred dollar bills, like the one where Grandma had been, and two more copies of the strange document that I had signed with my finger.
After staring down for a while, I started banging my hand on the bottom of the trunk to see how they might have slipped out. But it was completely solid.
“Hey!” yelled a voice. “What are you doing there?”
Spinning around, I saw Chip Ricky entering the room.
“Where’s Ms. Conklin?” he demanded.
“Uh . . . ,” I said, pointing at the pile of bills “She was right there.”
Crossing to Grandma’s black pedestal, Chip Ricky snatched up the document I had signed.
I turned back to look in the trunk, at the other two piles of money.
“Kayla,” I said, unable to breathe. “. . . and Baby Lu . . . and Grandma.”
“Vanished, have they?” he said, still reading the receipt.
I nodded.
“Your father signed this?” he said.
“No,” I said. “That’s my signature.”
“You can read Gubbinsglopf?” said Chip Ricky.
“No . . . I mean . . . Wait, you can read that?”
“Most of it,” said Chip Ricky. “We recently had Florida Pete sign a similar contract. We’ve only been in business with these beings for a few years.”
“What? . . . But why?”
“After Earth governments banned our products, Ms. Conklin asked your father to find alternative markets for the inventory. So, I’ve had to familiarize myself with such contracts before. The general gist of this one seems to be that you have sold your family to the aliens, though I’m not at all sure how that’s possible.”
“No! I just loaned them Grandma for a week.”
“These aliens,” he said, “have no distinction between individuals and their families. So, if you sold them your grandmother, the rest of your family would be sold as well. The only irregularity I see is how you yourself are still here. Since you are part of the family that you have legally sold to them, they should have taken you as well. That’s quite puzzling.”
He stared down at me a moment. Then he snapped his fingers and pointed at the collar around my neck.
“The Golden Hoop,” he said. “The security collar! I guess it works.”
“What?” I said, reaching up and touching the Hoop around my neck.
“See, they always take whole families,” he said. “It’s just like the animals in the zoo. Whole families disappear . . . Your father invented the collar to keep the animals safe from abduction. And now, the collar has kept you safe.”
“No, but I . . .”
“If you don’t mind me saying, Mr. Conklin, you have played your cards brilliantly. Conklin Manor, Conklin Industries, and the entire estate are now legally yours. The Conklin holdings on Earth alone are worth billions!”
“What?” I said.
“Hmm,” said Chip Ricky, consulting the spreadsheet on his clipboard. “We’ll need a new laundress, of course.”
“Mom!” I said. “But she’s in Nevada!”
“Your entire family will be taken by the aliens. Geography is unimportant in matters of teleportation. So, Mr. Conklin, shall I assemble the remaining staff to meet the new young master?”
Turning away from him, I headed for the stairs.
I ran all the way down to our rooms in the basement.
There was a pile of money where each of my family members had disappeared. I supposed there was a pile of bills somewhere in Nevada that had been my mom.
If I could have gathered them for a family portrait, it would have looked like this:
I stood in the door between my family’s two small rooms in the basement.
I noticed that Dad had swiped three cookies from his meeting with Grandma and left them for me on the kitchen table.
Kayla had kept her promise, too. The TV sat on my cot, plugged in and ready to watch.
She had gotten Squeep! back for me as well, just as she said she would. He sat on my pillow in front of the television screen.
Still numb with shock, I sat down on the cot beside Squeep!
The bedroom seemed impossibly still and quiet. I looked at my TV, at the plate of cookies, at the lizard—all the things I had wanted.
I began to cry.
Then I began to panic.
But you can only cry and panic for so long, before you realize that you need to take action.
I had to get my family back, from wherever they were.
PART 3
SO YOU’VE SOLD YOUR FAMILY TO THE ALIENS
CHAPTER 19
LISTEN TO THE LIZARD
I didn’t like the way that Squeep! kept staring at me.
“What are you looking at?” I said.
He held me in his cold lizard glare, as though accusing me of something unspeakable.
“What?” I asked. “Do you think I wanted to sell them to the aliens? You think I somehow planned this whole thing? Why would I?”
He gazed back icily, silently. He was sweating me like some kind of reptilian district attorney.
“What did I stand to gain from it?” I said. “I mean, besides money and . . . everything I ever wanted. So what if I said I would be happier without them . . . people say a lot of things. At least I’m doing something to get them back! Unlike you, you lizard.”
I held up the notebook, where I had been writing down my rescue plan for the past several hours. I looked over what I had so far:
Buy a rocket from NASA.
“Okay, I know it’s not a very good plan,” I said to Squeep! “But do you have a better one?”
Squeep! ran over to the TV and began whacking his tail against it. He had very expressive body language for a lizard.
“You want to watch TV?” I said. “How’s that going to help?”
Shaking my head at him, I went back to my notebook. The problem with any rocket plan was that I didn’t even know where in space my family was. They were probably light-years away—somewhere inaccessible to man.
Think harder, I told myself. Focus!
Squeep! wasn’t helping. He kept whacking his tail against the TV.
“Would you stop that?” I barked.
He became sad and downcast. I felt terrible for snapping at him.
“I’m sorry, Squeep!” I said, picking him up and hugging him. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you . . . You’re the only family I have left now.”
This made me suddenly emotional. I began rocking Squeep! in my arms and singing him an old Moldovan lullaby. He bit my finger.
“Ow!” I yelled, dropping him back onto the cot. He ran back to the TV and started banging his little head against it.
“Why do you want to watch TV so badly?” I asked.
Looking at the set, I noticed now that Alice had attached something new to the top—a little gold tower antenna, like the one I had seen on the TV in the Black Room.
Curious, I reached out and clicked the set on. The moment I did so, Squeep! looked deeply relieved, as though thinking, Finally!
As the set warmed up, I began eating one of the stroopwafels.
I heard the music for Wrastlinsanity. Only it wasn’t Wrastlinsanity, but some kind of sci-fi horror movie with the same sets, graphics, and sounds as Wrastlinsanity. It even had the same deep-voiced announcer, though instead of English he spoke some burbling gibberish language. And instead of wrestlers, hideous monsters fought.
This giant bug monster . . .
Fought this flying spiked eel monster . . .
. . . in all the most brutal and gruesome ways imaginable. I couldn’t believe they allowed stuff like this on TV! The incredibly scary flying spiked eel monster defeated the giant bug not by pinning it, but through multiple dismemberments and d
ecapitation.
As they played the Wrastlinsanity victory music, the graphics showed the spiked eel monster at the top of the championship bracket. Its next challenger would be a team of furry, bug-eyed spider monsters.
The animated bracket scrolled down to promote an upcoming match. To my surprise, I saw that one of the next fighters would be Florida Pete! They had Pete chained up and imprisoned in some kind of glass pen. The world champion thrashed wildly against his steel chains but could not break them.
Announcing this next match, the deep voice said the equivalent of “Aaand the chaaallenger!” in the burbling gibberish language.
A camera zoomed in on the challenger, which was not a monster or a wrestler at all but eight terrified human beings: My mom! My dad! My five sisters! And Grandma.
I spit cookie crumbs everywhere.
My family was in this death match! They were making them fight. Those lousy, rotten, double-dealing Gubbinses were making them fight!
Imprisoned in a glass pen, huddled together in horror, my family stared up at something that cast a strange violet light down upon them. Only Kayla stared straight at the camera—straight at me. She mouthed the same inaudible words over and over: Ah . . . Oh . . . Ee. Kayla was trying to tell me something.
Ah . . . Low . . . Ee. Fah . . . Oh . . . Eep.
Follow Squeep!
She wanted me to follow Squeep! Wait, where was he?
I saw that the lizard had leapt off my bedding and scrambled over toward Alice’s cot. I stood and followed him. Squeep! had wrapped his little front flippers around Alice’s silver makeup compact. He was trying to lift it up toward me, heaving with all the strength in his exclamation-point-shaped body. I reached down and took it from him.
I examined the little disk of silver. Could Alice’s secret hiding place still be connected to her? My dad had invented one technology that let beings cross the universe. Could the compact be another?
I pressed the little latch to pop it open.
Like magic, fancy script letters engraved themselves onto its silver surface and formed two words: “Access Denied.”
