90_Minutes_to_Live

by JournalStone

  He leaned against the doorway with a crooked grin. His gray eyes twinkled as he held up two large paper bags from Willie’s.

  She stepped aside. “Well, come on in.”

  THE END

  Uninvited

  (Young Adult)

  By

  JG Faherty

  It all started in Bev Pietro’s garage, like so many other adventures. Except none of those ended in death.

  “What the heck is that?” Kit Bannon reached out to touch the object in question on his best friend’s work table.

  “Don’t touch it!” Bev Pietro leaned forward, blocking his outstretched hand.

  “Geez, Bev. What’s the big deal?” Kit walked around her so he could get a better look. He’d seen her build some odd things before but never anything like this.

  From arm’s length away, it looked like she’d created some type of computer-board club sandwich. Only, it was a monster; something Dagwood Bumstead might have made, if he worked with electronics instead of bread and meat.

  Six circuit boards sat one over the other, tiny corner rods keeping each one about two inches from the next. A dizzying array of wafers, pronged chips and fans sat side-by-side with last-generation resistors, capacitors and transistors. Coiled wire and cordless phone batteries added to the forest of growths on both sides of each board. Thick globs of solder held everything together.

  Completing the tower of confusion were two triangular antennae, which Kit recognized as normally used for pulling in hard-to-get FM signals on a home stereo. Five feet of speaker wire connected them to the top-level board. The antennae rested on the table behind a PC monitor, one of the old-fashioned kind from before flat screens became so popular.

  “I don’t know what it is but it works,” Bev muttered, twisting a lock of hair between two fingers—a habit she’d had as long Kit had known her. It meant she was really concentrating.

  He leaned closer. The monitor and the keyboard Bev currently cradled in her lap were both plugged into USB ports on one of the middle boards, which was connected by wires to something that looked like the inside of a cable receiver box. Knowing her habit for taking apart the family’s appliances, he had a feeling they wouldn’t be watching television in Bev’s house anytime soon.

  “What do you mean, it works?” he stuck a brick of grape bubble gum in his mouth and spoke around it as he chewed. “What does it do?”

  “I’m not sure. I just finished putting it together. I hit the power switch and everything lit up.”

  “I don’t see any lights.” Kit bent down, peered at the underside of the boards. A power cord ran to an outlet under the bench.

  “That’s ‘cause I turned it off, doofus. You can’t plug a monitor or keyboard into a computer while it’s running.”

  “I knew that.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Kit blew a bubble; let it get almost as large as a softball before carefully sucking it back into his mouth. Bev would kill him if he got gum on any of her stuff.

  “It’s a computer?” he asked, wiping the sticky leftovers from his lips.

  “It’s got parts from one.”

  “What were you trying to build?”

  “A satellite receiver but something else happened.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  Kit pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. Some of his friends at school goofed on him for hanging out so much with a girl a year younger than him but he paid no attention to them. Let them dream about their pop stars. He had a real girl to spend time with.

  And someday she’d realize they had something special and then they could date instead of being just friends.

  Kit was nothing if not patient. You had to be if you wanted to hang out with Bev. She had a habit of getting lost in her hobbies and forgetting anyone else was there. Sometimes she drifted off in the middle of a conversation—like right now. Most people would think they needed to repeat their question but he knew Bev had heard him. She’d answer in her own time.

  Meanwhile, he could sit and stare at her pretty blonde hair, her ocean-green eyes and her cute little nose. Since school let out for the summer and the weather had turned hot, he’d also taken to staring at other parts of her body, parts that had just recently started getting larger.

  She touched a small button on the bottom board. A humming sound filled the air, followed by the whir of several computer fans all turning on. Her pale, lightly freckled hands sat poised over the keyboard, as if ready to start a typing competition.

  Kit found himself waiting as anxiously as she did. He never doubted something would happen. Everything she built worked, although not always well…or the way she intended.

  “Last time I got a picture. Something weird.”

  The monitor in question changed from black to sky blue, indicating it had power.

  Before Kit could ask his next question, a swirling, twisting shape appeared on the screen. Colors danced within it, as if someone had poured colored dye into one of the miniature dust tornadoes you’d find whirling down the road in the hottest parts of an Oklahoma summer.

  “Cool! How’d you do that?” he leaned in closer.

  “I didn’t. It just does it by itself. It’s the same picture I got before. That’s why I hooked up the keyboard. I want to see if I can change it.”

  “Change it how?” In Boy Scouts, he’d built a simple two-band radio and he could use a computer. But he knew he could no more build something like this than he could make one of his mom’s triple layer fudge cakes. Bev was the engineering geek, not him.

  “We’ll see.” she tapped some of the keys.

  Nothing happened.

  “It’s not working,” Kit said; his head close enough to hers to smell the fresh apple scent of her shampoo. He’d never known shampoo could make a person get all tingly inside.

  “It might not do anything else.”

  She tapped out another sequence of keystrokes.

  The rainbow wind-devil continued to perform its gyrations in the center of the screen.

  “Let me try.” Before Bev could object, he leaned over her and touched the Up arrow on the keyboard.

  Instantly, the wind-devil got larger.

  “Hey, it worked! I made it zoom in!” he tried to touch the key again but Bev smacked his hand.

  “Stop it! You might break something. We’ll try each key one at a time.”

  Bev tapped the Down arrow with a ragged, broken nail.

  The image returned back to its original size.

  “Try the Left and Right arrows next.”

  She hit the Left arrow and the image disappeared, replaced by a new, easily identifiable picture.

  It was a field but unlike any field Kit had ever seen.

  Black rocks lay scattered across ground the color of the funky brown mustard his dad used on hotdogs. No grass but several clumps of what looked like dead bushes, except instead of leaves these had wicked-looking thorns sticking out all over. Behind those, the cloudless sky was bright green.

  “Are you sure your monitor’s color is adjusted right?”

  “Yes. I don’t understand it. I’m not even using a video program.”

  “Hit another key, see what happens.”

  This time Bev touched the Page Up key.

  The scene changed again. Now it showed something that might have been a tree, if the tree was made of wax and left out in the sun. Instead of bark, sagging ripples covered the dark-gray trunk. The branches drooped as if tired of fighting gravity anymore. A few orange-yellow leaves, large and round, fluttered in an invisible breeze.

  From behind a cluster of leaves, a head peeked out.

  “Do you see that?” Kit pointed at the two bright yellow eyes set in the brown fur.

  “I see it. But what is it?” Bev moved forward until her face was almost pressed against the glass. One hand twisted in her hair.

  “How should I know? Zoom in on it.”

  Bev hit the Up arrow and the picture grew larger but the animal, or bird
, remained unidentifiable.

  “Let’s see what Enter does.” Kit leaned across again and hit the key before Bev could say no.

  A loud crackling noise sounded, like paper bags being lit on fire.

  “I told you not to touch anything!” Bev pushed back from the workbench. A smell of overheating copper wire filled the garage.

  “I’m sorry.” Kit looked at the tower of circuit boards but no smoke or flames were visible.

  “Oh, crap.” Bev’s voice sounded more surprised than angry.

  One look told him why.

  A yellow glow had built up between the two antennae. In the space of a few seconds, it went from the size of a walnut to somewhat larger than a softball.

  “Kit!” She got up from her chair and backed away from the bench. He stayed right with her.

  “Don’t blame me, it’s your machine.”

  They’d managed to put ten feet or so between themselves and the table when the amorphous, luminescent orb, now the size of a basketball and filling the entire space between the two antennae, turned black.

  At the same moment, there was a pop, hardly louder than a cork pulled from a bottle.

  Kit still jumped back another foot and felt Bev do the same.

  From the center of the black circle came a screeching, flapping creature with yellow eyes. Kit had only seen something like it once before….

  —On Bev’s computer screen, hiding in the branches of a mutant tree—

  “Look out!” Bev ducked and raised her arms over her head as the thing swept past.

  Kit ran to the work table. Everything seemed back to normal; no mysterious glowing orbs, no black circles, no burning metal smell. On the monitor, the alien tree still fluttered in the breeze.

  But no yellow eyes peeked out from among the leaves.

  He turned back to where Bev sat curled up, her arms over her head. “Bev, it’s gone. C’mon, we have to find it.”

  “Find it? How can it even be here?” she stood up slowly, eyes darting all around as if it might be waiting to pounce.

  Maybe it is.

  “I don’t know but we can’t let it run loose. Our parents will kill us.”

  They ran outside. The bright summer sun momentarily blinded Kit after the dimmer light of the garage and he pulled his Oklahoma State ball cap down low to shield his eyes.

  Life on Glenmore Drive continued on as normal. Children rode their bikes; Mrs. Gartley watered her flower beds. Down the street, Andy Kilmer and one of his friends were washing their cars. Birds sang, bees flew and dogs barked.

  No one screamed. No police sirens shattered the calm.

  “Kit, it could be anywhere.”

  She was right. He didn’t even know where to start looking. It could be in any one of a hundred trees, or in someone’s attic, or ten miles away.

  “Oh, man, I can’t believe this.”

  “Did you get a good look at it?”

  Kit thought for a minute. It had flown past so quickly that he’d only gotten an impression of it. Maybe the size of Chihuahua? Fluffy, dark fur, large, owlish yellow eyes, long arms and legs. A tail.

  And of course, the wings.

  “It was like a tiny, flying monkey.” That didn’t seem right but it was close enough.

  “Yeah. It went right past my face. It didn’t have a beak like a bird would. But I couldn’t see a mouth or nose either. Just those big eyes.”

  “We better go back and turn that machine off before anything else comes through.”

  “Turn it off? I want to see what else is out there!”

  “Are you crazy? You do realize you opened up some kind of black hole to another world, don’t you?” Kit took off his hat and wiped a hand across his fresh crew-cut. He was slick with sweat and he didn’t think it was from the heat.

  “Well, duh. I think that’s pretty obvious. And it can’t be a black hole. It’s more like a gateway or a wormhole.”

  “Whatever. I just don’t think you should mess with it anymore.”

  She poked him in the chest. “I didn’t mess with it! You did! You’re the one who hit Enter. That’s what opened the gate. As long as we just look, think about all the things we can discover. We’ll be famous!”

  Kit started to object but had a sudden picture of them, together on the cover of People magazine. ‘Oklahoma Teens Discover First Life On Another Planet!’ In his mind, he and Bev were posing before her machine, smiling.

  And holding hands.

  It could happen.

  “All right but we only look,” he followed her back to the workbench.

  “Well....” Bev sat down and pulled the chair up to the table.

  “Well what?”

  She had that tone, the same one she’d used the day she talked him into helping her break open the bee’s nest so she could photograph the hive’s structure for a science report.

  She still claimed she didn’t know there were bees in it.

  “It’s just that, no one will believe us if we don’t have any proof. So, maybe we could just bring some samples across, some leaves or dirt. Nothing alive,” she was already busy using the arrow keys to zoom in on one leaf of the freaky tree.

  “Bev, I don’t think....”

  Too late. She had the screen focused on a heavy, round leaf and she hit the Enter key.

  The sharp odor of overheating transformers filled Kit’s nose and once more the yellow orb started growing between the antennae.

  Pop.

  A moment later, the orangey-colored leaf fell to the tabletop. Kit reached out a tentative hand to touch it but she stopped him.

  “Don’t. It could be poisonous,” she used a pair of needle nose pliers to pick up the thick frond. Unlike the tree leaves Kit was used to seeing, this one had no veins running through it. The top and bottom were the same shade.

  Bev placed the alien plant sample into a plastic bag that had previously held her USB cables, folded the edge over and sealed it with a piece of tape.

  A disquieting thought came to life in Kit’s head. “Uh, what about bacteria or diseases?”

  She looked at him and he’d never seen her eyes more serious, even when they’d been in the ambulance, on the way to the hospital for their bee stings.

  “After the monkey-bird, if there’re any viruses or bacteria in that world’s atmosphere or on the animals that can hurt us, we’re probably already infected. And so is the rest of the neighborhood.”

  Kit imagined everyone in a three block radius dropping dead from an alien disease. How would he explain that to his parents?

  “So what’s next?” he tried to banish the grim picture from his thoughts but although it moved away, it didn’t disappear completely.

  “We keep collecting samples until we have a good variety to bring to the authorities, like NASA.” Bev played around with the Arrow, Page Up, and Page Down keys, changing the scene showing on the monitor.

  “I think I’ve got it now. Left and Right shift the view back and forth, Up and Down arrows are zoom in and out and the Page Up, Page Down keys move the view to another location entirely. I don’t know if it’s on the same world or another.”

  She tried each of the other keys on the board but none of them affected the picture.

  After a few minutes of practice, Bev started focusing in on various rocks, soil and plant life. She figured out the zoom had to be relatively close up to an object, in order for it to be drawn through to the garage.

  Kit busied himself with sample bagging. He snuck a box of zip lock bags, along with some Tupperware and a roll of kitchen garbage bags, from Bev’s pantry.

  As soon as she brought something over, Kit—now wearing a pair of gardening gloves—would bag it. Then he’d stick a Post-It note on it, as a makeshift label.

  Thirty minutes later, they had a growing pile of samples on the table and floor. The garage smelled like an electrical fire and Bev’s parents were due home from her brother’s Little League game in a few minutes.

  “I think we better stop no
w,” Bev said. “We’ve had the machine on for almost ninety minutes and it’s getting really hot. That must be its limit.”

  “What are you going to tell them?” he asked as she shut the machine off.

  “My parents? Nothing.” Bev laid a plastic tarp over her invention, and taped a piece of paper marked ‘Do Not Touch!!’ on it. “They’d freak. They’ll find out when NASA comes knocking on the door. Then it’ll be too late for me to get in trouble.”

  “You know, you can’t just send a letter to NASA or call them,” Kit said. The samples had been packed into two empty boxes, which they planned to store in Bev’s closet.

  “No kidding. But we can bring a couple to Mr. Sloan and have him contact NASA for us. Him they’ll believe.”

  He figured she was right. They’d had Sloan for eighth-grade Biology this past year. Unlike most teachers, he was actually pretty cool and he didn’t mind when students brought him dead bugs or snakes to identify.

  Bev paused at her door. “You better not say anything either. Promise?”

  “Cross my heart.” He made the motion, held out both hands to show he hadn’t crossed his fingers. “I can’t wait to see everyone’s faces when we’re famous!”

  * * *

  Getting Mr. Sloan to believe their story had been harder than Kit had thought it would be. He’d figured they could just say they found these new plants and could Mr. Sloan please identify them? But the teacher had wanted to know where they found them. When they didn’t have a believable story, they’d ended up showing him the machine and demonstrating it.

  He’d wanted to tell their parents, tell the police, tell everyone but they’d finally convinced him to contact NASA or some similar agency. Of course, that was after Bev had threatened to hide the machine and tell everyone Sloan was a liar.

  Sloan had brought one of the funny round leaves to the Botany department at Oklahoma State and they’d run tests on it. The results had been as crazy as Kit had expected. In addition to carbon, the cellular material contained silicon and gold, of all things. The cells themselves had three distinct walls or layers and fluids flowed through intracellular channels instead of xylem and phloem.