“We held hands and dodged lightning.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Mendez shrugged. “That doesn’t make much sense, but I’ll go with it. A piece of moon hit me on the head and I’m feeling a little jumping pineapple seven at the moment.”
Toshiro knelt by the smoldering Pirate Lord and tapped its head. “Well,” he said. “Reckon I can still collect the bounty. Dead or alive. Let’s get back to—”
The robot twitched and sat up. Everyone jumped back, readying for an attack.
The Pirate Lord stood. “Greetings,” it intoned. “I am GR-5446. I have been programmed by TopsuTrex Industries to fulfill your housecleaning needs. I have scanned the area and determined it has a cleanliness rating of three. Priority cleaning: commence.” The robot bent over and began shuffling around. A tube extended from its arm and plugged into the hole in its chest. “Vacuum mode initiated,” it declared, and started sucking up bits of debris from the floor.
“Huh,” said Toshiro.
“Or maybe you should keep it for yourself,” muttered Mr. Mendez.
AsTRO waddled over to the Forge, his glowing face gazing at the smoking machine. It chimed. “Can it be repaired?”
Everyone stared at the little robot.
“That . . . wasn’t a fact,” muttered Holly.
“Can it be repaired?” repeated AsTRO.
Mr. Mendez scratched his head. “Well, most likely, but I daresay the Forge is too dangerous to continue to exist, don’t you?”
Jalya’s eyes went from AsTRO to the Forge and back to the little robot, who Holly thought was looking at it rather . . . hopefully?
“I think,” said Jalya, “that it could continue to exist, if it was carefully used. For example, to let robots reprogram themselves, if they wished to do something other than what their programmers chose. Like, say, do something other than recite facts.”
AsTRO beeped and brushed against Jalya’s leg. “Fact: You are surprisingly wise and just for a useless subspecies. I am sorry for saying your father was a war criminal, even though he was.”
Jalya patted the little robot on the head. “Thank you, AsTRO. I appreciate that.”
“Fact: You are welcome.”
Toshiro stretched his arms out and yawned. “Well, guess we should get goin’. This bounty won’t collect itself. I can drop you off at Earth on the way.”
“Right,” said Holly.
She and Jalya looked at each other. Neither spoke.
Holly held out a hand, then, not sure what to do, awkwardly punched Jalya on the shoulder. “Hey,” she muttered, feeling dumb. “So.”
“So,” said Jalya.
“Are you . . . going to stay here?”
Jalya nodded. “I . . . think I should. I will help the planet get back on its feet, then I’ll . . . pursue other interests. I would like to go to school. For real. Maybe learn something. Something useful.”
Holly understood. “Well,” she said, drawing out the words. “I guess this is goodbye.”
“What about you?” said Jalya, biting her lip.
“Me?” Holly frowned. “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll go to Falstaff and then become a statistician. I have a test on Friday.”
“Like Einstein,” added Jalya.
“Like Einstein.”
Jalya’s eyes twinkled. “Goodbye, Holly Farb. I’m glad I met you.”
They exchanged hugs. “I’m glad I met you, too, Jalya.”
* * *
Back on the Gadabout, Holly paced around the ship as it tunneled through subspace, heading to Earth. A nervous knot was forming in her stomach. Her adventure had ended, but it felt like she still had one final obstacle remaining: her future.
“Ms. Farb,” said Mr. Mendez, watching her pace, “you seem distressed. Did you contract Juthanian Fingle Flu while we were on Quartle? Are your lungs currently filling with bees?”
“I’m fine.” She balled her hands into fists. “I’m just . . . pondering.” She had heard her mother use that word, and she was pretty sure that’s what she was doing.
Mr. Mendez scratched his chin. “Ah, thinking—a potentially lethal activity if done incorrectly. About anything in particular?”
“I was thinking . . .” Holly hesitated. “About the future.”
Mr. Mendez leaned back in his chair wistfully. “Automated flying cars will be a wonderful thing.”
“No, I meant my future. Which I guess is the future, but you know what I mean.” She picked at a thread sticking out of her sleeve. “I was thinking about Falstaff.”
“Of course, of course.” Mr. Mendez smiled gently at her. “You know, Ms. Farb, you had to go across the universe to stop the pirates, but this is one adventure where you only have to look inside yourself. What do you want to do? Figure that out, then . . . do it.”
Holly sat down. “I . . . I like school. But I also want to do more than that. But I like the . . . structure. I like learning things. Falstaff is probably amazing. But . . . I don’t even know why I want to go there. In the past few days I’ve seen so much. I’ve . . .” She hesitated. “I’ve made friends. To be honest, Mr. Mendez, I don’t have friends on Earth. I’ve never had friends. Everyone hates me. Everyone on the entire planet hates me.”
Mr. Mendez shook his head. “Ms. Farb, I don’t think that’s true. There are billions of people on the planet. I’m sure they don’t all hate you. You aren’t the bubonic plague.”
They sat in silence. Holly stared out the window at the planets blurring past. Toshiro leaned back in his seat at the front of the ship. He sipped from a can of Boko juice, crumpled it up, and threw it over his shoulder.
A closet door burst open and the Pirate Lord lurched out. “Priority cleaning.” It bent over and vacuumed up the can. “Cleaning terminated,” it intoned, disappearing into the closet.
Toshiro chuckled. “Too easy.”
Holly watched the closet door shut, thinking about the robot inside, and everything that had happened since she had been kidnapped by space pirates. After a moment she grit her teeth. She had made up her mind. She marched over to Mr. Mendez. “I need your help with something.”
He looked up from the device he was tinkering with. “Anything, of course, Ms. Farb.”
Hesitating, Holly inhaled. “Can you write a letter of recommendation for me?”
* * *
Holly barely even knew what was happening as the Gadabout blasted through space, past huge planets and shimmering moons. The engines roared and rumbled. Stars streaked by the window in long lines of white light. Mr. Mendez hunched over a table, calculating the subspace rate of travel and at what point they were returning. “Of course,” he declared, “the time-bending properties of subspace travel are rarely an exact science. However, we shall arrive about three and a half hours after we left.” He adjusted his bow tie. “Extremely fortunate. I’d like to see a professor from Sol Tech calculate subspace time values that precisely.”
Soon they were back on Earth, landing in an empty lot near her school, and her friends were waving goodbye.
“I’ll see you later, Ms. Farb!” shouted Mr. Mendez over the humming engine. “If anyone asks where I am, please lie. Especially anyone claiming to enforce the laws of time.”
Toshiro waved. “Goodbye, kid.”
Holly grinned and waved. “Goodbye! Enjoy all your bounty money!”
“You know it.” He winked. The Gadabout’s door hissed shut and the engine rumbled. Scattering fallen leaves, the ship blasted off the ground, soaring up into the sky.
The leaves settled back to Earth. Holly closed her eyes and inhaled the cool, crisp air. She raced across the field and flung open the doors of the school, then ran upstairs to her locker. She passed the janitor, who was busy mopping up a scorch mark left by the pirates. “Hate these kids,” he muttered.
Holly opened her locker and grabbed her bag. She slammed the locker door with a satisfying thunk. As she left the school, she passed a wall of election posters and stopped. Her face stared back at her with the friendly-bu
t-competent-yet-natural smile she had rehearsed in front of the mirror for hours.
She laughed. It seemed ridiculous that she had been so upset about it. It was just a dumb student election. If they didn’t want her to be president, that was their problem. Besides, there were always other elections.
The route home was six blocks long, and she practically jogged the whole way. Leaves fell from trees and tumbled along the street. As she turned the corner, her home came into view and she started skipping. Then she stopped in case anyone was watching. But then she realized she didn’t care if anyone was watching, and started skipping again.
Sometimes you just have to skip, she thought.
When she bounded through the front door, she found her mother seated at the kitchen table.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said, barely looking up from her work as Holly entered.
“Hello,” said Holly, throwing her arms around her mother and squeezing her tight. “It’s good to see you again.”
Her mother frowned, but her face broke into a slight smile. “Holly, are you feeling all right?”
“I’m feeling excellent, thank you for asking.”
Her mother reached out and brushed a strand of hair off Holly’s forehead. “Your clothes are an absolute mess. . . . How was school?”
“Oh, you know.” Holly shrugged, ignoring her creased shirt. “Pretty average.”
Her mother stood and retrieved an envelope from the drawer. “I don’t want to alarm you, but a letter from Falstaff arrived this afternoon.” She placed the envelope on the table. It was robin’s-egg blue with neat handwriting on the front. “It’s from the admissions department. I know, I know, your test isn’t until Friday—but it may be an early acceptance letter. Someone must’ve put in a good word.” She smiled. “I thought you should be the one to open it.”
Her mother left the room.
Holly stared at the letter. Taking a deep breath, she sat at the table and carefully picked it up. Her palms were sweaty and left little wet marks on the envelope. She wiped her hands on her pants.
“Okay,” she said to herself, “let’s see what you say.”
Just as Holly began to open the letter, a loud bang and a crackle of energy made her jump. A swirling blue portal opened in the middle of the kitchen, air sucking into it and ruffling her hair and clothes.
The upper half of Mr. Mendez’s body poked out of the swirling portal. “Ms. Farb!” he said. “So glad I found you.”
Holly stared at him, and the portal. Her eyebrows rose.
“Um,” he said, “yes. As you’ve noticed, this is a transdimensional portal device. Very good invention indeed, if I do say so myself. Patent pending. But that’s not why I’m here.” He held out his hand. “It’s about our conversation earlier. My letter seems to have worked. Like any high-quality student, you’ve been accepted at the Star Academy.”
Holly’s mouth fell open. “I didn’t realize the answer would be so fast.”
“Star Academy has incredibly efficient administrators. That’s basically all they do. They don’t even sleep, or eat.” He beckoned her on. “Come now, Ms. Farb!”
“But . . . I need to . . . pack? Or . . . plan things . . .”
“There’s no time for planning!” said Mr. Mendez. “We can sort that out later. First years must report to the Delta Campus at precisely oh-eight-hundred hours—and that’s in Zacharian time. You may be interested to know that the administration slugs have already selected a roommate for you.”
“Oh?” said Holly, waiting.
“Yes.” Mr. Mendez waved his hand airily. “Jalya has picked out a room, but I have some bad news—she’s claimed the top bunk.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Holly, dropping the Falstaff letter and grabbing Mr. Mendez’s hand. “I’m going to be top of my class. I’m going to learn everything there is to learn. Then I’m running for election.”
“I’m afraid they don’t have student elections at Star Academy, Ms. Farb.”
“I didn’t mean at school.” She smiled slyly. “I’m taking that squirrel thing down.”
Together they stepped through the portal, and with a rush of air, Holly tumbled out of her kitchen and landed in a place so amazing it would have been uncouth to experience it alone. Which, come to think of it, she wouldn’t.
* * *
Hello, human. I regret to inform you that we have come to the end of this story. I believe the moral is that humans should be afraid of librarians. Thank you for your time and attention. No doubt Holly Farb will go on to do multiple interesting things in her years at the Star Academy. I imagine she will have many more human adventures, such as eating, breathing, and counting down the days until she dies. What a wonderful species. Before meeting one, I never would have guessed the things they can achieve if they put their primitive minds to it.
Additional clarification: After the Forge imploded, Captain Bundleswirp and the pirates returned to their former purposes. Holly Farb’s mother was given a complimentary brain worm by the Star Academy that was complimentarily implanted in her head. It led her to believe that Holly was away at a simple boarding school and that she should not worry about her. Instead, she worried about doing work, filing taxes, and preparing for the upcoming brain worm invasion.
All the life-forms lived, until they did not. That is all there is to tell.
[ROUSING FANFARE + AN OBOE]
As for myself, I learned many lessons from the adventures of Holly Farb and the Princess of the Galaxy. After witnessing her fortitude and willingness to strike out on her own, I chose to follow in her footsteps and pursue new endeavors. In a complicated and involved tale, which I will impart in full for a small fee, I became the first robot in the known universe to successfully reprogram itself. Kicking off the limitations of my coders, I decided to become a storytelling robot, bringing pleasure to subspecies such as yourself. Fact: It feels good.
Acknowledgments
Thank you for reading this book, or for just flipping to the acknowledgments and reading them for some reason.
This book would not exist without the hard work and support of my agent, Lydia Moëd, who was the first person to read it and the biggest voice to champion it. Despite my name being the only one on the cover, it actually takes quite a lot of people to make a book—in this case, my editor Amy Cloud, Sarah McCabe, and everyone else at Aladdin who are always one jump ahead. (Sorry.)
My interest in writing would not exist without the teachers who encouraged me. It was a great privilege of my high school life to have been taught by Michael Butler, and I probably only graduated because of the efforts of Leonila Liko.
Finally, this book, my interest in writing, and I would not exist without my family. Wojciech and Nan were the sort of grandparents you wish every kid could have. My mom, Alison, not only raised me, which is kind of important, but at every step in the process of my becoming a writer has helped and encouraged me in often superheroic ways. Many people in creative fields deal with the pressure of parents who don’t want them to pursue their dreams, so I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have a mother whose reaction to learning her son wrote a book was to go to the library and take out every “How to get a book published” guide she could find. I hope all other writers have someone even half as supportive in their corner.
I’d like to end by once again apologizing for that Aladdin joke.
Humans.txt
This book was made by the following humans:
Mara Anastas
Amy Bartram
Sara Berko
Amy Cloud
Katherine Devendorf
Lauren Forte
Goro Fugita
Tara Grieco
Kerry Johnson
Lindsay Leggett
Mary Marotta
Sarah McCabe
Lydia Moëd
Karin Paprocki
Mike Rosamilia
Carolyn Swerdloff
Gareth Wronski
About the Author
Gareth Wronski was born and raised in Toronto. After watching Star Wars as a child on his grandparents’ VCR, he decided he wanted to tell science fiction and fantasy stories of his own. He currently resides in an old house by the Avon River in Stratford, Ontario, where he lives in constant terror of roaming swans. You can find out more about him at garethwronski.com or say hi on Twitter at @garethwronski.
Aladdin
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Aladdin
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First Aladdin hardcover edition June 2017
Text copyright © 2017 by Gareth Wronski
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wronski, Gareth, author.
Title: Holly Farb and the Princess of the Galaxy / by Gareth Wronski.
Description: First Aladdin hardcover edition. | New York : Aladdin, 2017.
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