Grumbling, he returned to the document. As he struggled to answer a question in four parts about slipping hazards I filled him in on the Star Lad rumour circulating the school.
“Oh, that’s just great.” He pinched the bridge of his nose like he was getting a headache. “So now on top of filling out stupid forms I have to deal with a bunch of whispering schoolkids pointing fingers and making snide comments. And what if one of them goes full Sherlock and discovers that the rumour is actually true?”
“That won’t happen,” I said. “No one’s ever going to believe that you’re Star Lad.”
“And why not?” he snapped.
“I’m sure it’ll just blow over.” I said, swiftly changing the subject.
Zack sighed and put down his pen. “Y’know what, maybe I should go with Stellar right now. Maybe in his world I’ll actually be appreciated.”
It was clear that Zack was getting fed up with his Star Lad duties. “Nobody said that being a superhero would just be rescuing orphans from burning buildings,” I reminded him.
He jumped up and slipped on his blazer. “I don’t know why people always use that as an example. I’ve been doing this a while now and I haven’t met a single orphan.” He tucked the risk assessment document under one arm. “Have you talked to Lara yet? She’s furious that you didn’t ask her to be on the Gorgon the World-Eater mission.”
“Me?”
“Not you you. The other you.”
That’s what Lara must have wanted to discuss over lunch. “Why doesn’t Stellar want her?” I asked.
Zack was in a hurry to leave. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s already a Dark Flutter in his world.”
Strange. If I was assembling a team of superheroes to take on a megademon, I’d want to recruit as much firepower as possible.
“I have to go and meet Cara,” said Zack.
He was crazy about Lara’s sister, Cara. Thanks to a run-in with an evil cyborg double, she’d recently broken up with Matthias, her long-term boyfriend and Viking, which in Zack’s head had created an opening for the position. Of boyfriend, not Viking. Unfortunately, to her Zack was just the slightly weird neighbour who lurked behind her in the lunch queue and tutored her in physics.
He turned a corner and was gone. As I stood there alone I became aware of the distinctive smell of hot chips. Eating was forbidden in the library, which meant that someone was breaking the rules big-time. Curious to meet the offender I followed my nose down the aisle, but before I had reached the end I stopped in surprise. A figure blocked my path.
Stellar stood with his back towards me. He was wearing my spare school uniform. Which meant he must’ve gone into my room to get it. The cheek.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “Were you following me? What if someone sees us together?”
“Never mind that. Look.” He stepped to one side. In front of him the air shimmered like a heat-haze on a desert road. The ghostly smell of chips was at its peak here. It was like being haunted by a McDonald’s. The shimmering effect was contained to a small, irregular outline just a few centimetres in diameter.
“Uh, what is that?” I said.
Stellar reached an investigative finger towards what I was rapidly coming to the conclusion must be a glitch in reality. “I think it’s a –”
There was a blur of movement and something shot out of the hole with a squeak. I jumped back.
“– gerbil,” finished Stellar.
The small creature skidded along the floor, its tiny claws skittering on the linoleum, and stopped at my feet. It had a tan and white coat and distinctive black marks over its eyes like a superhero mask.
“Wayne?” Stellar and I said at the same time.
We crouched down and studied what I now suspected to be my – our – former pet.
“I was just thinking about you,” said Stellar to Wayne.
I’d been thinking about Wayne too, but I didn’t imagine that’d make him suddenly jump out of a hole in the air. “It can’t be Wayne. Can it?”
The gerbil lifted its tiny masked face to meet ours and for a moment I was convinced it could understand. Then, to my astonishment, a pair of red beams shot from its eyes, blasted narrowly past my right ear and bored two tiny holes in the spine of a book on the shelf.
I could see Wayne adjust the angle of his head to line up another shot. If I didn’t do something quickly I was about to get zapped by a gerbil with laser-eyes.
“Shoo!” I shouted. “Get off!”
Wayne ignored me.
In a flash Stellar directed his telekinetic power at the small creature, lifting it off the floor, sending it back through the hazy outline. It vanished; all that was left was a gerbil-shaped hole in the air. And then, with a long sucking noise, that was gone too.
“Impossible,” Stellar muttered in the silence that followed. From his reaction I could tell that whatever just happened, it was new to him too.
“Luke?”
I swung round to see Lara standing in the aisle. She glared at me, tapping one foot.
“You need to have a word with yourself.”
I glanced to my side. Stellar had vanished, though not in the same way as Wayne. At Lara’s approach he’d swiftly concealed himself behind the nearest bookcase. I knew why he was avoiding her – because of the mission. Typical of the superheroes in our family, letting me deal with the irritating stuff.
“Did you hear me, Luke? You need to—”
“Is this about Stellar? I don’t know why he won’t have you on the mission. Have you talked to him?”
“I’m talking to you.”
“We’re not the same—” Oh, what was the point.
“I won’t be left out. I’m a superhero like Star Lad, qualified to participate in all world-saving schemes. Why’s he sidelined me, hmm? I’ll tell you why – because I’m a girl.”
“I don’t think that’s—”
She folded her arms. “This could go to court.”
“What, the Superhero Employment Tribunal?”
“Are you making fun of me, Luke Parker?” She gave me no time to respond. “You’re the leader of S.C.A.R.F. I want on that mission. Sort it.”
“Yes, I… No problem. On it,” I said. “I’m definitely on it.”
With a withering look she turned on her heel and stormed off, only to pause at the end of the aisle. “Oh, one more thing. You also have to talk to Serge.”
“About what?”
She squirmed. “You know.”
I did not know.
“For goodness’ sake,” she said, fidgeting with her sleeve. “His dislocation of undying love.”
Oh. That. “I don’t think he really meant it,” I said, figuring it would be better for all concerned – but mainly me – just to smooth over the unfortunate incident. “He only said it because he thought it was the end of the world.”
Lara frowned. “Is that what he told you?”
I ran through all the possible answers to that question and chose the one that I hoped would put a swift end to this conversation, even if it was not strictly true.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” She looked strangely hurt, but I had no idea why.
“Une gerbille?” remarked Serge with surprise.
“Not just any gerbille,” I said. “Wayne the gerbille.”
School was over for the day and Serge and I were heading to the comic shop to help with preparations for the grand reopening. On the way there I filled him in on the strange goings-on in the peculiarly dark library.
“We’d both been thinking about our old pet and then – hey presto! – he appeared. Well, not Wayne exactly. It was him, but he was more of an enhanced gerbil. The pet I always wished he’d be. Stellar seemed as surprised as I was.”
“And you have tried to recreate the phenomenon, I presume?” said Serge.
What did he take me for? I’d been doing nothing else since it happened. All through double maths and PE I’d concentrated my mind on Wayne, picturing his
chubby little body, hoping to summon him again. “Nothing,” I said glumly. “Which means Stellar made him appear, not me.”
“Ah oui, but appear from where?”
I’d been pondering that all afternoon and I had a theory. “In Stellar’s universe he’s me with powers, right? So what if in some alternate universe Wayne lived on and became the super-gerbil I always wanted?”
“In which case what you witnessed in the library was a wormhole,” Serge concluded, “or per’aps more accurately, a gerbille-’ole in the fabric of the universe.”
That made perfect sense. I could always rely on Serge for a pinpoint analysis of the strangest events.
“So Stellar has the ability to summon gerbils between universes,” he mused. “I must say that for a superpower it is rather niche.”
“What if it’s not just gerbils?” I said. “There are superheroes in comics who can manipulate the fabric of space and time, create doors between universes, even create whole universes.” Stellar’s strange new power made me anxious. Flying, force fields, even telekinesis were all pretty straightforward. Opening holes in the universe smacked of meddling with things best left alone. We turned into the High Street. “I wonder what else he can bring into existence.”
While Other Luke suffered through double maths and PE (we’d established that our timetables, like our noses and indeed the rest of our anatomy, were identical), I took the opportunity to return to IKEA. Wayne the gerbil’s mysterious materialisation in the library had thrown up some questions, and I was counting on the ship’s computer having the answers.
The store was quiet and it wasn’t long before I had the interdimensional bedroom to myself. I sat down in the command sofa. Recognising my presence, the ship fired up its onboard systems.
“Running diagnostics,” cooed the computer, which was still masquerading as a KLABB bedside lamp with a light-brown textured shade. Everything was in good shape for my return journey with Zack in one week’s time. In the meantime I was looking forward to hanging out in this world. Things were so much simpler here. Stupid Other Luke didn’t appreciate how good he had it.
I noticed a few changes from the last time I was here. One wall of the bedroom set was covered in wallpaper that featured a pattern made up of illustrations of computers. The bed had acquired a computer-themed duvet cover and pillow set, and there was a series of black and white prints of famous computers on the opposite wall.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I said.
The lamp-light turned from red to green, indicating a problem. “Fuel depleted,” it announced.
This was bad news. “What does the ship run on?”
“K’Bhejup beans,” it answered. “A synthetic plant-based fuel unique to the planet Trolox in the Caspian system.”
This wasn’t bad, it was catastrophic.
“So how am I supposed to refuel? It’s not as if I can pop into Tesco and pick up a packet of what d’you call them? Ketchup beans?” A slim TV hung in the centre of one wall. The computer projected the alien name on to it and my tongue made an attempt to get round the strange word. “K’Bhejup beans.”
No sooner had it passed my lips when the bedroom began to rock as if it was being buffeted by storm winds.
“Warning! Warning!” The computer blared. “Dimensional anomaly alert!”
Before me the air vibrated like the surface of a still pond broken by a dropped pebble. There was a sucking sound and at the centre of the pulsing waves formed a tiny black hole. What’s more, I could smell chips. Exactly the same thing had happened in the school library.
“Danger! Danger!” shrieked the computer.
What could it be – another laser-gerbil? Or worse?
With a pop, something shot out of the hole. As it flew past my head I snapped it out of the air with my telekinesis. There on my palm lay a small purple bean.
“K’Bhejup bean,” declared the computer.
No way! “Did you do that?”
“Negative.”
A thought that had been forming since the events in the library now took shape. “Did I do it?”
Before the ship could answer, there was more popping, as if all the weasels in the nursery rhyme had gone off at once, and more beans flew out of the hole, quickly coating the floor. They continued to pour out, rising to a height that covered my ankles, before the stream turned to a trickle and finally dried up.
“Reviewing fuel status,” said the computer. It paused to perform complex calculations, before adding, “There are enough K’Bhejup beans for a full tank.”
I began scooping them up into one of those giant blue IKEA bags. But as I collected the precious fuel, a great creaking noise echoed through the store, like a thousand sleepers in a thousand KOPARDAL beds all turning over at once. The floor shook, shelves trembled sending ornaments crashing to the floor, and then with a sucking noise like someone wading through a muddy bog in wellies, the mysterious hole vanished.
“OK, computer, tell me what’s going on.” I picked up a handful of beans. “How did these get here?”
The lamplight flashed away as the super-intelligent computer blabbed on for ages, describing the science behind the creation of the holes. Here are the highlights of our conversation:
Computer: “Dimensional Rift Yada Yada Identical Twin completely Hawking unfathomable.”
Me: “So what you’re saying is that me and Other Luke were never meant to meet. And when two versions of the same person come together they generate a strange force between them. Not like the actual Force, more like a magnetic field, but weirder.”
Computer: “Quantum-y Stargate Blah-Blah Incomprehensible Space Thingy.”
Me: “And thanks to my awesome powers I am able to super-charge this weird magnetic field, allowing me to pull objects – like a K’Bhejup bean or a laser-gerbil – from their universes into this one.”
Computer: “Affirmative Superposition Probability Gerbil Amplitude Heisenber-ghastly.”
Me: And whenever I do that I create one of those shimmering hole thingies. So they’re portals to other universes. Fascinating. Do you want to go into detail about how those work?
Computer: No.
This was so brilliant. It was like I’d been granted three wishes, but instead of three I had a whole infinite multiverse of wishes. “I wonder what I’d like next,” I mused. “Thor’s hammer, or Captain America’s shield, or—”
“Do you have this in red?” said a voice.
I looked up to see a man with black-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed beard holding the super-computer-disguised-as-a-bedside-lamp.
“Uh, I don’t work here. Sorry.”
“Oh. I see.” He paused, and remained exactly where he stood. “Do you know if it comes in red?”
What was it with some people?! With one thought I could have summoned the Ultimate Nullifier and wiped him from existence, erasing even the memory of him from the minds of everyone he knew. Instead, I pointed to a shelf stacked with boxes at the edge of the room set. “Top row. And it also comes in something called lapis. Goes well with the OTTIL cushion.”
As he headed off I wished all the problems in my world could be fixed by a surprisingly good-value cushion cover. I glanced at the SVÄRTA bunk bed and felt a pang. Zack used to have bunk beds and occasionally he’d let me sleep in his room (on the bottom bunk, obviously). I sighed. Little did the others know, but Gorgon the World-Eater was the least of my problems.
“I’ve figured out Stellar’s evil plan,” I announced to Serge and Lara as we walked home from school.
“I didn’t know he had one,” said Lara.
Was she bonkers? “Of course he has one! Why else is he in our world?”
“Uh, to recruit Star Lad for an upcoming battle with a fearsome enemy. Y’know, like he said?”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know all that, but don’t you think it’s suspicious? The way he just showed up like that and suddenly he and Zack are like this.” I crossed my fingers.
“Are
you certain this is not the green-eyed monster speaking?” asked Serge.
“What – the Hulk?”
“Non, I refer to envy. Stellar is spending a lot of time with your brother.”
It was true. For several days I’d been forced to watch as, at every opportunity, Stellar wheedled his way further into Zack’s good books. Between mocks and supervillain strategy sessions I couldn’t get five minutes alone with my brother, but somehow he had endless time for Stellar. As soon as Zack finished school, the two of them would gather in the tree house to plan their superpowered defence against Gorgon the World-Eater. And during these sessions I wasn’t even allowed in my own tree house. Outrageous! They didn’t want S.C.A.R.F.’s help at all, though they weren’t shy about accepting an endless supply of Serge’s home baking. In fact, there was only one person Zack would ditch Stellar for, and that was Cara.
We’d reached the bus stop. Lara was catching the 162 to her dad’s new flat across town but we still had a few minutes before it arrived.
“So, do you want to hear my theory or not?” I asked.
She and Serge waited expectantly for my shocking revelation.
“Stellar is planning to replace me.” It was so obvious, I kicked myself for not figuring it out sooner. “He wants to take over my life.”
Lara frowned. “Uh, OK. But why?”
She may have been super-smart but sometimes she could be slow on the uptake. “Because that’s what evil twins do. Right, Serge?”
Serge nodded. “It is standard operating procedure in situations like this. The bad twin takes on the life of the good twin, using his uncanny likeness to fool even his closest friends.” He gasped and took a step back. “What if you have already been substituted?”
“That is a very good point,” I said.
Lara threw up her hands. “No, it’s not. It’s ridiculous.” She gave a long sigh. “Just to be clear. You’re saying that Stellar wants to swap his awesome superhero life in his world to be a perfectly average schoolboy who’ll be lucky to pass maths in this one?”
My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain Page 3
