Herbert's Wormhole

by Peter Nelson

  What no one noticed as they watched EL-ROY’s spectacular play was that after throwing his teammate, Number 13 had immediately bounded across the infield. He dived and intercepted EL-ROY’s throw, tagging the surprised Thrasher out with a karate kick to the legs.

  “ONE OUT!” The announcers shouted in unison.

  Number 13 then triple-backflipped over to Dallas, who watched in amazement from the ground beneath third base. “Go, Alexville!” Dallas yelled as he caught his twirling teammate and launched him straight upward, just as the runner was about to leap from second base to third. He slammed directly into the Thrasher, and the two of them spun above the base, tangled in midair.

  “TWO OUTS!” the announcers boomed.

  Number 13 grabbed the Thrasher in a wrestling hold and spun him around as they began to descend toward the field. He flung the player directly into the runner who’d reached second. This wasn’t an out, technically, but it took him out. He was knocked off second base by his flailing teammate, and the two of them tumbled into the outfield, where EL-ROY was enjoying the show. “Good bit of base running there, mates!” he guffawed at them.

  This left Brockton standing on first base with two outs and all his teammates cleared from the bases. Ordinarily he would’ve stayed put, but he noticed something in the outfield. His teammate, Philadelphia, who’d tangled with Number 13, was holding something up—a weighted chest pad. Philly had cheated—he’d stripped off Number 13’s gear.

  Brockton looked up. Alex was floating away. Within seconds he was too high above the field to be able to throw the ball down to his teammates. A few more seconds and he was sailing past the MonitOrb, straight for the craggy ceiling of the Meteor-Dome.

  “Yes!” Brockton pumped his fist in the air as he bounded casually toward second base, watching Alex drift higher and higher. Rounding second, he waved to the fans who yelled, “Cheater! Cheater!” High above them all, Alex slammed into a stalactite at the top of the Meteor-Dome. Brockton bounced high over third, and gracefully stretched out his toe to tap it.

  Then suddenly, the base dropped out of his reach.

  The bases crashed to the ground, as did the bouncing fielders. Brockton also dropped like a stone, hitting the dirt with a dull thud.

  The crowd fell back into their seats. They gasped as Number 13, high above the field, now clung helplessly from his stalactite.

  Brockton’s last few feet to home plate were not easy. His heavy pads made it feel like he was pulling a truck filled with refrigerators packed with frozen turkeys, uphill. He heard the roar of the crowd and looked up. High above him, Alex let go of the stalactite. He stretched out his oversized jersey with his arms and launched himself, using the wind resistance to soar through the air like a flying squirrel. Brockton screamed as he crawled toward the plate. Just a he got close, the ninja-squirrel zoomed in at an angle and slammed into the heavily padded Thrasher. The two of them tumbled to a stop down the baseline, kicking up a huge cloud of dust.

  The stadium grew silent as the dust settled. Brockton was lying with arms and fingers outstretched, reaching for—but not quite touching—home plate. From underneath him, a baseball mitt slowly emerged. It lifted off the ground and the hand inside it opened slowly—the ball rolled out of the mitt and clunked Brockton on the head.

  “HE’S OUT!” the announcers roared. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, YOU JUST WITNESSED THE FIRST SINGLE-PLAYER TRIPLE PLAY IN A.G. T-Ball HISTORY!”

  The crowd went crazy. And with the gravity restored, they were free to leap to their feet without fear of injury or death.

  “Way to go, Alexville!” Chicago pulled his teammate out from under the defeated Thrasher and hugged him tightly. The rest of the team lifted the two of them up onto their shoulders, cheering and high-fiving, and carried them to the dugout.

  They suddenly stopped short.

  Stepping onto the field in just his underpants, holding an icepack and eating a Meteor-Dog, was Alex.

  “What’s all the noise about?” he asked, looking up at Chicago. “And why are you hugging her?”

  Chicago released the person in Alex’s jersey and pulled off the tint-masked helmet. Sammi shook out her hair and smiled at him.

  “How did you—?” he stammered.

  Sammi shrugged. “Let’s see. Black belt in Jujitsu. Greco-Roman wrestling lessons since I was six. Acrobat Circus and Extreme Gymnastics sleepaway camp last year came in handy—oh, and Lassie League MVP, four summers in a row.” She smiled at the stunned captain of the Meteors.

  CHAPTER 33

  Clouding the excitement from the mystery triple-playmaker was the question nearly everyone in the Meteor-Dome had on their minds: Who turned on the gravity? A loud, whirring sound from above soon provided an answer, as a circle in the center of the ceiling retracted. The Human/G’Dalien Harmony Enforcement SquadCar air-dropped in and hovered an inch above the center of the field. The batwing doors opened and LO-PEZ stepped out, munching on a slab of pizza.

  Mr. Illinois got out next and flipped open his tricked-out detective’s notebook. As he spoke into it, his voice boomed through the MonitOrb, across the entire stadium. “ATTENTION CITIZENS! THERE IS NO NEED TO PANIC!”

  GOR-DON popped out of the car and shoved Mr. Illinois to one side, grabbing his megaphone-notebook. “DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS HUMAN!” he shrieked into it.

  GOR-DON continued. “THE HUMAN SITTING NEXT TO YOU IS NOT YOUR FRIEND! HE WISHES TO DESTROY YOU! I HAVE PROOF!” He pointed the detective’s notebook at the MonitOrb floating above the field and popped in the green cube. The screen suddenly presented to the entire stadium the footage of Alex blasting aliens. In stadium Jumbo-vision, Alex looked and sounded even more sinister.

  Every head in the crowd turned and looked at Alex, who was standing on the field in his underpants. He swallowed a bite of Meteor-Dog and smiled weakly.

  The entire stadium was suddenly hurled into a state of panic. All through the stands, the G’Daliens and the humans, suddenly confused and terrified, ran in circles and leaped over seats as they tried to get away from one another.

  Mr. Illinois and LO-PEZ attempted to control the situation, but it was hopeless. GOR-DON watched the clamoring crowd from the field and grinned at an evil job well done. He was too pleased with himself to notice Herbert sneaking away from the SquadCar. Herbert ran over to Alex, Sammi, and Chicago.

  “Hey, Herbalulu!” Chicago said.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Sammi said. “We’ve gotta get Alex out before this crowd kills him!” “Or not,” Herbert said, glaring at Alex.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Alex shot back, just as a giant Meteor-Cup full of green gooey juice hit him in the head. Herbert laughed. Alex pushed him.

  “Will you two stop it?!” Sammi said, getting between them. She and Chicago quickly pulled the two of them into the Meteors’ locker room.

  Inside, Herbert immediately got right back in Alex’s face. “You ignoramus! Are you happy now?! You’ve ruined everything, all because of your moronic video games!”

  Alex squinted at Herbert menacingly. He slowly moved in even closer, until they were almost touching noses. “I’m going to ask you one more time. What the heck is a video game?!”

  The raspy sound of a feeble voice made everyone turn around. “Will you two ignorami knock it off?”

  A very old man floated out of a shadowy corner, hovering in a wheelchair with no wheels. He had a blanket over his lap and was bald and wrinkly.

  But there was something very familiar about him. “You two need to focus now,” he wheezed. “You can settle your differences later if there is a later, which will depend upon whether or not you can focus now.”

  They all stared at him, confused. Alex turned to Herbert. “That sounds like something you’d say.”

  The old man sighed, “You’re smarter than I remember, which isn’t smart at all.”

  “Who are you?” Herbert asked.

  “Perhaps this will jog your feeble memories,” the old man said. He ya
nked the blanket away. Sitting on his lap was the AlienSlayer: 3-D! video game box.

  Herbert shifted his anger from Alex to the old stranger. “Thief! You stole the game I stashed on the roof of Andretti’s!” he said, then thought a second. “Wait. How did you know the combination?”

  The old man laughed at him. “Please. Three, Fourteen, Eighteen, Seventy-nine? Einstein’s birthday. It would’ve been obvious and predictable, even if I wasn’t you.”

  They all froze.

  “Wait, what?” Chicago asked no one in particular.

  “Hey, you know what I just realized?” Alex pointed out to Herbert, “This old guy could totally be your grandfather.”

  Herbert and the old man looked at Alex. At the same time, they said, “Nice theory, Einstein.”

  “Hey! That’s what he always says—Oh. Okay. He’s you, but old. Got it.” Alex said.

  Herbert rushed to his older self. “So many questions. Let’s start with the basics. Did we get into M.I.T.? Are we famous inventors? Do we still have a weird fear of damp cotton swabs?”

  The old man looked at him.

  “Wow, I was an annoying kid. No wonder I didn’t have any friends until I got rich.”

  “You’re rich?” Sammi said.

  “You have friends?” Alex added.

  “Wait, what?” Chicago repeated.

  Old Man Herbert led them out of the locker room and into the dugout.

  They looked up at the stands and onto the field. Things had gotten much worse. Alex’s violent, alien-slaying memory played over and over on the MonitOrb, and it was making everyone act completely crazy. Humans and G’Daliens were scrambling around, trying to escape one another. Some were fighting. Others were trying to get out, but GOR-DON had sealed the exits. He was still in the middle of it all, laughing at the chaos he’d caused, waiting for just the right time to step up, lead the panicked sheep, and begin his despotic rule.

  “Whoa,” Alex said. “So this is kinda bad.”

  “Sure is.” Old Man Herbert smiled over at his much younger self. “Good thing we’ve got our incredibly ingenious plan to save the day.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Herbert smiled back at him. “I couldn’t agree with me more!” he said, and grabbed the box. “Okay. Listen up, everyone. First we’re gonna need to locate the exact input frequency to that MonitOrb up there and override its projection receptors to match the holographic output of this game—” He stopped and wiggled the box to his ear like it was a wrapped birthday present. He looked panicked as he tore open the AS:3-D! box. It was empty. He looked at the old man.

  “What?” Old Man Herbert wheezed a laugh. “I hooked everything up weeks ago,” he said. He hit a button on his AirChair, and the console to the AS:3-D! game flipped up in front of him. A satellite dish extended from behind and opened like a robotic umbrella. It pivoted and locked in on the MonitOrb hovering above the field. Then it beeped.

  “The box was just for effect.” He wheezed again. “I’ve been waiting a hundred years for you pea-brains to show up. Trust me, we’re all set.” He flipped a switch on the old AS:3-D! game. “Now let’s do this. If I miss my afternoon nap, I get cranky.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “Har har har!” GOR-DON’s laugh was as loud as it was evil. “Showtime’s over. Time to go to work, I suppose.” He cleared his throat before he opened his horrid mouth to speak to the crowd. But what boomed out of the MonitOrb was not his voice.

  “PEOPLE OF EARTH! WE INTERRUPT YOUR MINDLESS ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMMING TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR PLANET IS ABOUT TO BE INVADED—BY ALIENS!” Throughout the stands, the scrambling crowd stopped.

  They looked up at the MonitOrb. Alex’s memory footage went all fuzzy, then was replaced by the gruesome head of LAZ-ROW, Evil Alien Overlord® from AlienSlayer: 3-D! An army of horrible-looking aliens leaped out of the MonitOrb and hovered in midair in front of it. They were snarling, growling, and generally scaring the daylights out of every living thing in the stadium—even GOR-DON.

  “What is this?!” he shrieked, dropping the tricked out detective’s notebook.

  Chicago jumped up onto the roof of the SquadCar. EL-ROY bounded past the stunned GOR-DON and grabbed the detective’s notebook. He tossed it to Chicago, who flipped it open and addressed the crowd.

  “MY FELLOW CITIZENS OF EARTH!” Chicago’s voice echoed. “HUMANS AND G’DALIENS, LEND ME YOUR EARHOLES! WE ARE NOT ENEMIES!” EL-ROY scrambled up onto the SquadCar, and Chicago put his arm around him. “WE ARE ALL FRIENDS!”

  EL-ROY took the notebook. Even broadcast through the MonitOrb across the enormous stadium, his voice still sounded like that of a large chipmunk. “HE’S RIGHT!” chirped EL-ROY. “WE MUST BAND TOGETHER TO DEFEAT THIS TRUE THREAT TO THE PLANET WE ALL LOVE AND SHARE!”

  Chicago glanced down at him. “Hey, that was good,” he whispered. EL-ROY shrugged.

  “YES!” Chicago’s voice boomed to the rapt masses. “WE MUST ASK HELP FROM THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN FIGHT THESE STRANGE AND HORRIBLE CREATURES—THE ALIEN SLAYERS!”

  The batwing doors opened under their feet. Alex, Herbert, and Sammi stepped out. They wore the silver N.E.D. suits, and A.G. T-Ball–certified weighted boots. They were armed with the motion-sensor weapons from the AS:3-D! game. Alex gripped the TurboStaff, Herbert the BlasterShield, and Sammi wore the MegaMittens. They looked like superheroes—from the future. Above them, the evil LAZ-ROW and his fighters continued to hover, almost as if they were waiting for a challenger. Which they were.

  GOR-DON didn’t know whether to be afraid or enraged. Either way, things were not going as planned.

  “Wait!” he yelled. “This is some sort of trick! They’re not really alien slayers! They can’t be! I made all of that up!” On the sidelines, Mr. Illinois raised an eyebrow and shared a glance with GOR-DON. He pulled out his spare detective’s notebook, this one a more basic model, and scribbled down a quick “to-do” list for himself:

  1. Get chubby, annoying janitor’s confession.

  2. Write up case report.

  3. Pick up flowers for Mrs. Illinois.

  “No! No! This isn’t how it’s supposed to work!” GOR-DON squealed, but he was quickly drowned out by Chicago, who addressed the crowd one last time. “EVERYONE, PLEASE! TAKE YOUR SEATS, BUCKLE IN, AND LET’S ALL OF US CHEER ON THESE BRAVE WARRIORS!” As the fans strapped back in to their seats, Chicago gave the thumbs-up to Old Man Herbert, who hovered in his AirChair on the sidelines, beside the giant antigravity switch.

  He flipped the gravity off.

  The Meteor-Dome jolted and hummed. The bases flew up into the air again. The buckled-in fans hovered in their seats. And GOR-DON, too befuddled to strap himself down in time, went hurling straight up, screaming as he slammed into the bottom of the MonitOrb. His blobby flesh flattened against its smooth metallic underbelly like pancake batter on a bowling ball.

  GOR-DON had a front row seat as Alex, Herbert, and Sammi leaped up onto the three floating bases and faced the alien-projecting MonitOrb. The crowd began to cheer them on.

  “You guys ready for this?” Sammi yelled.

  Herbert smirked at her. “I think we can handle it.”

  “Let’s blow these slime-sucking freaks into a gazillion space-chunks!” Alex suddenly blurted out.

  The other two shared a look, and Alex wondered for a split second where he’d heard that before. Down on the field, Old Man Herbert pressed PLAY on the AS: 3-D! console.

  The 3-D holographic creatures attacked. Herbert fumbled with his BlasterShield, but recovered just in time to deflect a massive laser blast. KAPOWWWZZT!!

  “Whoa!” he hollered. “Impressively lifelike graphics!” He turned to the others. “Guys! Behind me and let’s move in!” He leaped into the air, blocking shots meant for his partners, and burst out laughing. “I’ve never felt so alive!” he shouted as he jumped from base to base, deflecting blasts intended for his teammates.

  Sammi moved in. She thrust her MegaMitten-enhanced fists of fury into the torsos of the holographic at
tackers. She leaped and ninja-flipped as she delivered blow after deadly blow. But for every alien she killed, two more new ones leaped out of the MonitOrb screen.

  “There are too many of them!” she yelled.

  “I’ve got to pull back!”

  “Take cover!” Alex yelled, leaping from second to third base to avoid being blasted by a hologram. “I’ve got this!” He spun his TurboStaff like a baton, whipping up a laser whirlpool. It blasted through a gang of attackers, laying them to holographic waste. As a few 3-D adversaries broke through his firepower, he stopped spinning and wielded the deadly staff like a Kung Fu master. He clubbed and speared the snarling, pixilated beasts until they were a mere trickle coming out of the MonitOrb.

  With the death of each vicious holograph, the aliens let out an ear-piercing squeal before exploding. And each time, it was answered by the even louder roar of the crowd.

  “We’re winning! Great job, you guys!” yelled Herbert.

  “So are we done?” Sammi asked, kind of bored.

  “No,” Alex said as he squinted at the screen. “That was just the appetizer. Now comes the main course.” He wondered to himself how he could possibly know this.

  Sure enough, LAZ-ROW, Evil Alien Overlord®, rose from out of the MonitOrb. The gigantic, terrifying creature shot lasers out of its eyes, and its tail whipped around a large, electro-zapping spike. It looked down at the three puny humans and blurted out an evil laugh.