Gertie Milk and the Great Keeper Rescue

by Simon Van Booy

  “Transparency is most certainly the greatest miracle.”

  “So as the forest grows . . .” Birdy thought out loud, “so too will the glass?”

  “That’s right,” the scientist went on, “and if a meteor hits it, the nanobots can bounce it away using magnetic repulsion. There’s an equation for that if you’d like to see it.”

  Birdy’s face lit up. “I would love to! But I should really get back to my friends, I mean, fellow doctors.”

  They released the robot ant, and watched it crawl away to a nearby clump of moss. Then they left the forest dome and its fresh odor of trees to return through the workstation where the three biologists were still lounging about. The woman and bearded man were now drinking fizzy orange liquid from bottles while the third Loser, Gareth Milk, was just finishing his video game.

  Suddenly, Birdy caught sight of something moving on the table, something wriggling. It was a robot finger. Then on another desk were a wrist joint, steel wire, and several aluminum knuckles.

  “Did you see that fly escaping just then?” Birdy said, pointing upward. Dr. Brady and the two biologists all looked. Birdy swept his hand over a desk, dropping a dead thumb and other tiny robot parts into his pocket as a way to prove the robot hands had been coming from space station I-8-PP. He wondered then if the mean technicians could be Losers.

  * * *

  ‹‹ • • • ››

  BACK IN THE CAPTAIN’S lounge, Gertie and Kolt had decided that before they confessed everything to the captain, they would try to get information about the nearest black hole. The clock was still counting down. It would soon be a matter of minutes.

  “Wow . . . look at that,” Kolt said loudly in the direction of the captain. He was pointing to a chocolate chip sticking out of his muffin. “Reminds me of an edible black hole!”

  The captain strained her neck to look at Kolt’s plate, but was unimpressed by the lump of protruding chocolate.

  “Black holes are so weird,” Gertie added. “Lucky we didn’t fall into one on the way here!”

  The captain smiled at this. “It’s not likely,” she said. “You don’t fall into them, you’re sucked in, and we’re incredibly far from the nearest one.”

  “So, er, where would that be?” Kolt asked. “Just out of interest.”

  “In the Chestnut Cluster, beyond the moons of Ellie and Simple Bear,” said the captain, rolling her eyes over the table of things to eat.

  “Is it a big black hole?” Kolt asked.

  “Oh yes,” said the captain. “It’s one of the biggest, baddest black holes in the observable universe.”

  “Shame we couldn’t see it,” Kolt said, “being members of a space club an’ all.”

  “See it!” barked the captain. “If you got anywhere near it you’d be dragged in!”

  “It’s that powerful, eh?” Gertie marveled.

  “Not even light can escape its mammoth gravitational pull,” said the captain. “That’s why it’s called a black hole.”

  “Be nice to get up close though,” Gertie added, chewing on a spinach leaf, “and actually feel the power.”

  The captain eyed the three Keepers suspiciously— especially Robot Rabbit Boy, who was now licking sticky jam from his paws.

  Just then, Dr. Brady and Birdy entered in a shower of citrus “welcome mist.”

  “The ant has been returned, Captain, and here’s the last member of their crew, Doctor Seuss.”

  The captain looked at him. “What kind of space club was it you said you belonged to?”

  “Space club?” Birdy said. “You mean Keepers of Lost Things?”

  The captain raised her sleeve to talk, but then thought better of it.

  “Will you excuse myself and Doctor Brady for a few minutes?”

  After they had gone, Birdy rushed over to Kolt and Gertie at the buffet table.

  “Guess what?!” he said, eager to spill the contents of his pockets.

  Kolt was slicing a gluten-free, vegan, soy-free, cruelty-free blueberry muffin in half.

  “Keepers of Lost Things?” he said. “Gertie told them we were part of a space club!”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” said Birdy emptying his pockets of all the things he’d swiped from the workstation table. A few of the tinier bits bounced onto Kolt’s plate.

  “The robot hands really were built here!” the newest Keeper exclaimed.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” Gertie said darkly, “because I think we’re about to be arrested, and then we’re going to get blown up.”

  “Well, we can’t be arrested,” said Kolt, stuffing muffin into his mouth. “I’mstilleatingmyspacelunch.”

  “Gertie is right, we probably only have fifteen minutes before the Black Hole Muncher blows!”

  “Fear not . . .” Kolt said, crumbs tumbling from his mouth. “I have a brilliant plan.”

  He took two bags of spices from a pocket deep in his space suit and held them out.

  “Behold,” he said, “the magic power of herbs and spices.”

  Gertie and Birdy looked at one another.

  “One of these bags contains growing spice,” Kolt went on, “the other, shrinking spice.”

  “How do you know which is which?” asked Birdy.

  “I just know . . .” Kolt said, eyeballing the young mathematician.

  “Then why,” Gertie asked, “were you only two inches high when we met for the first time?”

  “Well, it was dark,” Kolt protested. “I couldn’t see the bags properly. Anyway, listen—you two are going to eat some growing spice, then when you’re both big, you can overpower the crew and force them to fly us to the nearest black hole, which we know is in the Chestnut Cluster beyond the moons of thingy and whatever. Then we’ll release the Muncher, finish what’s left of the buffet on this table, and go home to Skuldark, heroes!”

  “But won’t the space station get caught in the black hole’s massive gravitational pull and be crushed to something smaller than a Cave Sprite?” Gertie said.

  Kolt nodded. “Yes. That’s the only major weakness of my plan.”

  Gertie had another idea. “I think we should tell the captain the whole story, and she can decide. She’s the expert, after all, a real astronaut.”

  Suddenly from the corridor they heard shouting, and people running. Kolt panicked.

  “Quick!” he cried, fiddling with one of the spice bags. “Eat, eat, eat!”

  The captain appeared with several angry-looking scientists in a cloud of citrus “welcome mist.” Kolt tried to think of something to say, but suddenly realized he’d mixed up the spice packets, as Gertie and Birdy were now shrinking instead of growing.

  “Help!” Gertie cried, getting smaller and smaller.

  “Don’t worry,” boomed Kolt’s voice. “It’ll wear off in about ten minutes!”

  “What? What? What?”

  “It could always be worse!”

  36

  The Hungry Sheep

  WHEN THEY WERE ONLY an inch high, Kolt scooped up Gertie and Birdy and put them on the plate next to his uneaten half of blueberry muffin. But it was soon clear they’d ingested far too much shrinking spice, and continued to get smaller until they were quite invisible to both the naked eye—and eyes with clothes on.

  By this point Robot Rabbit Boy was in a panic at the sight of Gertie and Birdy’s sudden shrinkage, and was determined to follow them no matter what the cost. He lunged for a spice bag that had fallen on the floor, then licked out the entire contents in one flick of his rabbit tongue.

  As the captain and her crew advanced on Kolt bearing electro light-rods and carrying the Black Hole Muncher, the spice Robot Rabbit Boy had gobbled up started taking effect. But instead of shrinking like Gertie and Birdy, he began to do the opposite.

  At first it was only his head. But then
his ears ballooned and knocked an entire cake off the food table as he got bigger and bigger and bigger.

  The moment the cake splattered all over the floor, a buzzer went off on the other side of the lounge. A small door opened in the wall to release a live sheep whose job was to clean up edible spills—thereby reducing food waste and human energy output.

  The captain and her crew cowered in fear as Robot Rabbit Boy was becoming so enormous he almost touched the ceiling of the N.O.G. dome.

  “EGGCUP!

  “EGGCUP!

  “EGGCUP!

  “EGGCUP!!!”

  Everyone covered their ears at the head-splitting thunder of Robot Rabbit Boy’s voice—everyone except Gertie and Birdy, that is. They were stranded on the side of a mountain that was actually a crumb. They were so tiny that Kolt, Robot Rabbit Boy, the captain, and her crew seemed like they were miles away, and Robot Rabbit Boy’s voice was just a deep vibration that caused their muffin mountain to shake violently.

  However, wandering about calmly under the table, completely undeterred by the giant rabbit, tiny children, and a bomb about to go off, was the dutiful, highly trained live cleaning sheep. The creature had already begun chomping on bits of the fallen cake—when he began to smell his most favorite food of all time—gluten-free, vegan, cruelty-free, soy-free, organic, non-GMO blueberry muffins.

  With the humans distracted by a rabbit monster, the sheep carefully came up on one side of the table. Then he looked around once more to make sure he wasn’t being watched. It was forbidden for a cleaning sheep to eat anything that hadn’t fallen on the floor. But muffins were muffins. And so with the coast clear, the cleaning sheep homed in on where the half muffin lay innocently on the plate, minding its own business.

  As Robot Rabbit Boy’s head was pushing on the flexible N.O.G. ceiling, the sheep took one last look around, curled his tongue up one side of the buffet table, and tried to slurp the moist muffin-half into his mouth. But it was farther away than he thought, and his first attempt left him muffinless.

  For Gertie and Birdy, the sheep’s tongue was like the sky turning bright pink suddenly, then the air became sticky and tropical. They realized it was life or death, and darted into one of the many giant dough caverns, inlaid with jagged blueberry boulders.

  After running in, they realized that to a tiny person, a muffin was nothing but a sweet, dark maze—a breakfast treat made up mostly of air.

  The second slurp of the sheep’s tongue was like a soggy earthquake. Giant bubbles of slime rained down upon the muffin mountain and oozed into the cavern, making them go deeper and deeper into the sugary darkness to avoid being sucked up.

  At the continued growth of the rabbit, the captain and her crew gave up. They dropped their light-rods and the Black Hole Muncher, then escaped from the room in a spray of watermelon “farewell mist,” scarpering toward the emergency pods. The pods would propel them back to Earth Station 4 in the event of the biosphere’s destruction— which they never thought would come at the hands of a space rabbit’s allergic reaction to blueberry jam.

  * * *

  ‹‹ • • • ››

  LUCKY TO HAVE ESCAPED the live cleaning sheep’s tongue, Gertie and Birdy soon returned to their normal size, bursting out of their muffin cave in a shower of crumbs and landing on what appeared to be a dirty gray rug—which was Robot Rabbit Boy’s foot. Since he had licked up an entire packet, he was still getting bigger and bigger.

  “Kolt! What’s happened?”

  But Kolt (or at least his body) was under the table on his hands and knees eating cake off the floor. He looked up at them. “Baaaaaa,” he said, which in sheep language meant, “I swear I didn’t eat that muffin, I’m just a live cleaning product.”

  “What is going on?” Birdy said. “Why is Robot Rabbit Boy eighty feet high and Kolt acting like a sheep?”

  “Don’t know!” Gertie cried, having no idea what body-swap-bots were, and that Birdy had accidentally dropped a couple onto Kolt’s muffin when emptying out his pocket.

  Gertie pointed. “It’s the Black Hole Muncher!”

  The two Keepers sprinted over to it, only to find there were seventy-four seconds left until it blew.

  Before Gertie could think of what to do, a large sheep galloped toward them.

  “It’s me!” the animal shouted. “Baa, baa!”

  “What the!?” Gertie said. “A talking sheep?”

  “No, baa, it’s me, baa, Kolt, baa!”

  “Why are you . . . ?”

  “I don’t know, baa! It has to be the work of body-swapbots!”

  “Fifty-eight seconds until it blows!” said Birdy.

  “Baa, don’t worry . . .” said the sheep that was really Kolt.

  “Stop saying baa!” Gertie snapped angrily, wondering what it would feel like to be blown up. “And don’t say, It could always be worse.’”

  “I can’t help saying baa, I’m a sheep, baa! We have to get the giant Robot Rabbit Boy, baa, to use his nose laser to blast the Black Hole Muncher, baa, to, baa, to the, baa, baa . . .”

  “Out with it,” said Birdy. “You can do it . . .”

  “Baa, baa, baa, baa” went the sheep that was Kolt, his little white throat vibrating with each cry. “Nose laser, baa, blast bomb, baa, in direction of the Chestnut Cluster, baa, baa, baa, black, baa, hole . . . baa.”

  “That’s it!” Gertie said.

  “ROBOT RABBIT BAAAA!!!!!!” they all roared together.

  “LAVENDER!”

  “Yes!” Gertie said. “Lavender!”

  Robot Rabbit Boy bent down, completely crushing the food table and almost squashing Kolt’s body, which was still on the floor gobbling up cake.

  “TAKE THE BOMB! BLAST IT TO, UM, TO . . .” Gertie said, turning to the sheep that was Kolt. “Where is the Chestnut thing exactly?”

  “Over there, baa!” Kolt said, moving his fluffy head.

  “Where?”

  “Baa, there!” he said again, motioning with his head.

  Then Birdy had an idea. “Use your tail!”

  The sheep that was Kolt nodded, then pointed his tail in a particular direction, which Gertie then showed to Robot Rabbit Boy by using her arms.

  “We have to be quick, baa, baa,” Kolt bleated frantically. “Before the growing spice wears off, baa, baa.”

  “DOLLOP?”

  With only thirty-nine seconds left before detonation, Robot Rabbit Boy scooped up what to him was a tiny gold cube with flashing wires.

  “How’s he going to get it out of the dome and into space?” Gertie said. But Birdy, who had been thinking about the flexible dome glass, was already at the neon pink control panel by the door.

  Birdy said something to the computer, then answered Gertie without looking away from the flashing buttons. “If the Nanobot Osmosis Glass thinks Robot Rabbit Boy is a toxin—they’ll release him into space.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “It’s voice command,” Birdy said. “So I just told the computer we have a giant rabbit with a bomb, and need to let it out. . . .”

  “Will it work?”

  Suddenly, Robot Rabbit Boy’s head passed completely through the top of the dome glass as though through a thin layer of jelly.

  Gertie, Birdy, and the sheep that was Kolt watched, barely able to breathe or baa.

  With twenty-one seconds remaining, the Series 7 lifted the bomb through the flexible nanobot roof with his paw and nudged the Black Hole Muncher in the direction Gertie had shown him, which was toward the nearest black hole in the Chestnut Cluster, beyond the moons of Ellie and Simple Bear.

  As the bomb drifted away, Robot Rabbit Boy gave an almighty blast from his nose laser, which was now a thousand times more powerful and shook the whole space station.

  The force of the blast would have caused the bomb to explode righ
t over the space station had it not been for the pure luck of the fireproof panel from their rocket with the robot hand still sunbathing on it. It floated just in front of the bomb, shielding the weapon from the intense heat, but propelling it to an immense speed, far greater than the speed of light. A few seconds later, from somewhere deep in the Chestnut Cluster, a black hole almost let out a tiny burp—but as nothing can escape the pull of a black hole, it couldn’t even manage that when the Black Hole Muncher blew.

  They had done it again.

  The Keepers of Lost Things (whose job was supposed to be returning articles to eccentric geniuses in history and trying interesting foods) had saved not only the human race—but every living thing from the Chestnut Cluster to planet Earth.

  Only one question remained once Robot Rabbit Boy had shrunk back down to his normal size.

  Had the body-swap-bots eaten by Kolt and the sheep been set to temporary or permanent?

  At least one thing was certain.

  They both loved cake.

  37

  The Losers Come for Gareth Milk and Kolt Is Still a Sheep

  SLUMPED ON THE WHITE couch, tired but jubilant and utterly relieved, Gertie, Birdy, Robot Rabbit Boy, and the sheep that was Kolt didn’t have long to catch their breath before they saw something horribly familiar swoop over the top of the glass dome.

  It was Doll Head.

  “Losers, baa!”

  But Gertie’s first feeling was excitement. They had destroyed the Black Hole Muncher, Skuldark was safe, Birdy had been rescued, and the robotic ant was back in the rain forest dome scurrying about on leaves.

  “It’s us and, baa, them now, baa,” Kolt said. “The captain and her crew of scientists, baa, already got, baa, in their escape pods, baa.”

  Birdy seemed afraid. “Real Losers? What do they want?”

  “I don’t baa,” Kolt bleated, “but we should try and find out, baa.”

  Gertie turned to the newest Keeper. “Did you recognize any of the scientists at the rain forest dome? Any seem weird to you? Loserish maybe?”