I nod. That’s a lot of life signs. More aliens on that one planet than there are humans in our entire solar system. I can’t tell whether that means finding light speed fuel will be really easy or really hard.
“How long will it take us to get there?”
“Sending you coordinates now, Ari,” Becka says.
“At top speed?” Ari answers, looking at his screen. “It won’t take long. Four or five hours, maybe.”
I wind through some displays on my chair’s computer console, bringing up the ship’s supplies. At least we have plenty of regular fuel. We can wander around this system for months, no problem, although I really hope it doesn’t come to that.
“Good,” I say. “Set a course.”
16
The ship assures us that its autopilot setting can handle this linear orbit-to-orbit travel on its own—but we don’t 100% trust it to stay on course without a little supervision. So we keep someone on the bridge at all times. One by one we take turns changing our clothes, showering, napping for a bit, and grabbing something to eat that isn’t another bowl of Garlic O’s.
We’ve been wearing our school uniforms for three days, ever since the end-of-the-year assembly. We don’t stink or anything—our clothes are actually cleaner than when we were captured (which Ari thinks has something to do with the Elvidians’ advanced technology). But just because my uniform is clean doesn’t mean I’m not super sick of wearing it. When it’s my turn to freshen up, I dig into my suitcase—which I packed the night before our last day of school—and change into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. If I have to go on a desperate and dangerous treasure hunt to an overpopulated alien planet, I may as well be comfy. I even consider changing out of my old black sneakers and into a pair of flip-flops. But I’m too worried that I might have to run away from something or someone in the near future. Flip-flops don’t feel like the right footwear for a galactic fugitive.
After I pass out for a few hours, I head over to the kitchen next to the cafeteria. Thankfully, the lunch robots are still offline. They would not appreciate us raiding what’s left of their supplies. The fridges are almost empty, like they usually are at the end of the school year. (And I can’t even remember the last time we got a fresh produce delivery. May? April?) But the pantry is still well stocked, so I make myself literally the greatest peanut butter and jelly sandwich on this side of the galaxy, topped off with all the chocolate chip cookies I can eat. Fun fact: the number of chocolate chip cookies I can eat is a lot more than the number of chocolate chip cookies I should eat. So by the time I rejoin Ari and Becka on the bridge, I’m a little nauseous.
Totally worth it.
Sitting back down in the captain’s chair, I notice that Becka and Ari also changed into jeans and T-shirts. Maybe when this is all over, we can talk to Principal Lochner about easing up on the dress code. If we survive red-eyed aliens from another part of the galaxy, then we can probably handle shorts in math class. At least casual Fridays or something.
“Are we there yet?” I ask, amazed at how much better I feel now that I’ve showered, slept, and eaten some real food.
“Almost,” Ari answers, his fingers tapping nervously on his screen. “But—”
I spin around, my mind only half-focused on this conversation.
“Good, good. Anyone following us?”
I wonder if maybe we should bring a crate of cookies up to the bridge to have on hand when we get hungry. That would definitely be a good captainy decision.
“No, I don’t think so,” Ari answers. “But—”
“Great. Do we have any more information on the planet we’re heading toward?”
Maybe we could wheel a whole fridge up here. Or a freezer packed with ice cream. If I ever run my own spaceship when I’m an adult, I’m going to have ice cream on the bridge all the time. Why isn’t that already a thing?
“Yes. Becka’s learned some things . . .”
“Awesome! What do you—”
“Jack!” Ari yells, rudely interrupting me after I’ve interrupted him a bunch of times. “Listen!”
“Sheesh,” I say. “What is it?”
I know that things can’t be classified as “great” at the moment. But we deserve a few minutes of peace before the next crisis, right?
“Becka’s been scanning our surroundings,” Ari explains. “And when we looked at the readings, we noticed something.”
“Noticed what?” I ask.
“That’s just it,” Ari says, “I don’t know. It’s not a ship. It’s not a planet. It’s not anything that I recognize. It’s just this . . . bubble. And it’s coming up fast.”
“A bubble,” I echo.
“It completely surrounds the ninth planet.”
“Like more light speed jamming?”
“No, this is something else.”
“Do you think we should stop?”
“Nah,” says Becka, who’s casually wringing out her wet hair onto the carpet. “There are lots of ships out here now, coming and going from the planet, in and out of the bubble. And they all seem fine.”
She gestures at the window, and I realize there are loads of weird-looking ships all around us. Traffic. Fifty-something billion aliens all in one place will do that, I guess. “Okay,” I say. “How much longer until we get to the planet?”
“Eh, not long, I don’t think,” Ari answers. “At this speed, we should be there in—”
“CHECKPOINT.”
Ari falls silent. Becka and I freeze.
Something is out there.
“NON-INDIGENOUS LIFE-FORMS DE-TECTED ABOARD.”
“Do you see anything else on the scanners?” I ask Becka. “Are we under attack?”
She shrugs. “I don’t think so. I mean, none of these other ships are acting like anything’s wrong.”
“Did that voice come from one of the other ships?”
Becka runs a scan. “I . . . I can’t tell.”
“What should we do?” Ari asks. “Turn back?”
Before I can answer, a blue wall of light materializes directly in front of us, in space, and begins to move quickly toward the ship. Toward all of the ships. I don’t know what it is. And I don’t want to find out. I want to yell to Ari—tell him throw the engines into reverse. But there isn’t time. Between our speed and the speed of the moving light, we hit it in less than a second. I grab the sides of the captain’s chair and flinch, bracing for an impact—
—that doesn’t happen.
Instead, we just pass directly through the light. It ripples as it moves around us and through us. It’s some kind of scan, I guess. The light touches my skin, which tingles like a cold breeze just blew through the bridge.
It moves over Ari and Becka half a second after it moves over me.
“ASSESSMENT COMPLETE,” the creepy mind-voice booms. “COMMENCING ORIENTATION.”
We look at each other.
“What’s—”
Pop.
***
“—orientation?”
A burst of blinding white light fades as quickly as it came, leaving a few lingering purple spots floating in front of me, playing tricks on my eyes. But they also vanish almost instantly and my vision adjusts . . . to my new surroundings.
We’ve moved.
Instead of sitting on the bridge of the 118, we’re standing in a giant, single-file line that stretches out endlessly in front of us. Becka and Ari are in front of me, unharmed. I glance behind me: with each passing second, the line gets longer and longer as more aliens appear out of nowhere in the back of the line. Pop—another alien. Pop—another alien. Pop—another alien.
“Um, did we just teleport?” Becka asks.
“Maybe?” Ari says, halfway between a grimace and a smile. He can’t help getting excited about each new discovery, no matter how terrifying.
This room is big. I think. But it isn’t easy to tell how big. It’s barely a “room” at all. There aren’t any walls. There’s no ceiling. And if I wasn’t standing on so
lid ground, I’d say that there was no floor either. Everything is just . . . white. But not like the cafeteria on our ship, which has all solid white walls because of the digital paper. This feels different. Misty. Like we’re in a cloud, or a dream.
I give myself the pinch test. It hurts, which seems like a good sign, but doesn’t feel like enough evidence. So I kick Becka lightly in the back of one of her legs.
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” I say. “Just checking that this is real.”
She kicks me back, not lightly.
“Ow!”
“Real enough for you?” she grunts.
So we’re not in a dream. Probably. “Then where are we?” I ask.
Ari shrugs, and Becka says, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
The line moves up a few inches, and we shimmy forward with the aliens in front of us and behind us. I look to either side. Ours isn’t the only line. There must be at least a hundred others to our left and another hundred to our right—and no one is Elvidian: Two-legged, eight-handed, purple giraffes, with necks tied in knots? Check. Lizards with strings of light bulbs for tails? Check. Aliens that look almost human, except for the extra ear sticking out the tops of their heads? Check.
Creatures of all shapes and sizes, and even some without shapes and sizes. Blobs of light. I kid you not: tubes of dust with googly eyes.
This is one strange galaxy.
Some of the aliens around us are chatting calmly. Some are standing around silently. But—even though I assume they were also plucked from their ships with no explanation—nobody seems alarmed.
Well, almost nobody.
A booming scream fills the room and an alien shrieks—“You can’t do this!”—from a few lines over.
The crowd is thick, and it’s not easy to see who’s shouting. But when we step forward again, I get a glimpse of her through a break in one of the lines. She’s got light green skin and is wearing a dark green toga draped over one of her shoulders. She has long, sharp spikes growing out of her head, sticking out from under her green hair—which makes her look kind of like the Statue of Liberty. I glance around. She isn’t the only green lady in here, but the others are all trying to ignore their distressed friend.
“No!” she screams to no one in particular, like she’s talking to some invisible person in the sky. “Please! I forgot about Orientation! I can’t go through it again!”
She’s huffing and puffing and spinning around in place, shouting at the non-existent roof. Most of the other aliens in line are pretending she isn’t here. She’s the only one freaking out.
“I don’t want to go! I’m just here to get some supplies for my family! Please! And I love the Minister already. I won’t say anything bad about her while I’m planetside. I promise! I won’t even think anything bad about her!”
Even though she’s the only one who seems bothered by this place, she doesn’t sound like she’s gone off the deep end. She just sounds . . . scared.
“Just send me back!” she begs. “I don’t want to go to the planet anymore! I don’t need the supplies that badly. I’ve changed my mind! So just send me back! Do you hear me! Send me back!”
Standing up on my tiptoes, I can finally see what’s at the end of each line: small, square, glass booths. They’re staffed by Elvidians wearing plain black uniforms who stare at aliens passing in front of the booths one by one. This place reminds me of the trip I took with my parents to the European Zone on Mars. It was a few years ago, before they got divorced, and my mom had a doctor convention there. When we walked from the American side to the Eurozone, we had to go through something similar.
“I think this is, like, passport control,” I whisper to Ari and Becka.
I start to sweat. We don’t have any IDs on us. And if the Elvidians at the front figure out who we are, we’ll be dragged back to Elvid IV, or worse.
We’re close to the front of our line now. I watch as aliens approach the glass booth one at a time. A bluish light (the same shade as the one that scanned the ship) shines down for a few seconds. The Elvidian in the booth says something. The aliens step forward—and disappear into the white, misty walls that surround us.
“No!” the woman from the other line shrieks again. She’s reached the front. “I can’t! I won’t!”
But she doesn’t have much choice. Two armored Elvidian guards approach and drag her toward the booth, holding each of her arms. As the blue light passes over her, the guards swing her backward and toss her into the white mist, mid-scream.
“Next!” the Elvidian at the end of our line shouts. Add that to the growing list of things Elvidians are obsessed with: sitting behind desks while shouting “Next!” to frightened people.
Now it’s Ari’s turn. He glances around, and I know what he’s searching for: a way out. But there isn’t any. So, trembling, Ari walks up to the glass booth as the room scans him.
“Don’t turn around,” says a voice in my ear. The alien behind me is whispering to me. And I know: when an alien whispers “don’t turn around,” you don’t turn around. But I can’t help it. My heads whips to the side to see . . . no one. Or no one standing immediately behind me, anyway. There’s a line of aliens back there, of course. But the closest one—a little Statue of Liberty—is chatting with another alien, using a voice that sounds nothing like the one I just heard.
“I said not to turn around,” the voice rumbles. “You will arouse suspicion.”
I face front.
The guard says a few words to Ari, who throws a worried look back at us before stepping forward into the wall and disappearing.
“I can speak directly to you—into your mind—but only in this waystation,” the voice in my ear continues. “You should not have come here. But now that you have, I will do the only thing I can for you and tell you this: It isn’t real. It’s terrifying. And different for everyone. But it isn’t real.”
“Next!”
Becka’s turn. She walks up to the booth . . .
“And it will get to you eventually if you keep returning here, which I strongly advise against.”
The Elvidian guard speaks again, and Becka takes one fearless stride into the mist.
“They’ll try to make you love the Minister,” the mind voice tells me. “But it isn’t real. You can’t be brainwashed if you remember that. It isn’t real.”
“Next!”
I hesitate, wanting to question whoever is speaking to me. But there isn’t time. So I whisper, “Okay,” and walk forward.
The blue light shines on me.
“Distrusting, level five,” the Elvidian guard says in a monotone. He blows a bubble with the gum he’s chewing. “Approval-seeking, level three. Abandonment-fearing, level seven. Long live the Minister. Welcome to Elvid IX. Enjoy your visit.”
“Thanks?” I say, confused and scared.
“Proceed,” the Elvidian orders.
I look ahead of me, seeing nothing but a swirling cloud of white, and step into the mist.
17
“Jack,” Ari says. “Will you pass me that Pencil over there?”
“Ari? What—what happened? How did we get back here?”
We’re on the PSS 118, sitting in our regular seats in history class. The lights are dimmer than usual and the only desks in the room are mine and Ari’s. But everything else seems totally normal.
“Back here?” Ari asks. “What do you mean? And will you please pass me that Pencil over there?”
He gestures toward a shelf behind me, where a Pencil leans against a few textbooks.
“Sure,” I say, handing him the nanoprinter and looking around. “Where’s Becka?”
He smiles and sighs. “She is just perfect.”
“Right. Not my question.”
“But she is,” he insists, fiddling with the Pencil, clicking and writing in the air. “Absolutely, perfectly, perfect. Can you even believe how incredible she is?”
“I know, I know. She’s great.”
Typical.
“Aha.” On second thought, maybe Ari is acting a little weirder than usual.
“It won’t do her justice,” he goes on. “She’s so beautiful. Her eyes. Her face. And that voice! Have you ever heard anything so angelic?”
“Angelic?”
The man has lost it.
That’s when the door to the classroom swings wide open and Becka charges into the room.
“Isn’t she perfect?” Ari asks, smiling up at Becka.
Oh man. I want to look away. It’s like watching a space wreck happen in slow motion.
“Perfect,” Becka agrees. “She is just perfect.”
Wait, who are they talking about?
“Guys,” I say. “What’s going on?”
“She’s perfect,” Becka and Ari creepily say at the exact same time, like possessed twins in a horror movie. “An angel.”
“Who?” I shout—but before the question leaves my lips, I realize that I already know the answer. I don’t remember what happened during Orientation. One second, I was walking into the mist, and the next, I’m back here. But Becka and Ari must have been brainwashed.
“The Minister,” they answer dreamily, their voices in total sync.
“You’re not thinking straight,” I say, hoping that I can break whatever spell they’re under. “The Elvidians did something to you. You don’t really think that the Minister is perfect. We’ve never even met the Minister.”
Ari gasps and Becka starts cracking her knuckles.
“Not . . . perfect . . . ?” Becka asks, grinding her teeth. “Take it back!”
As she marches toward me, I jump up from my chair and back away. She pauses under a bright light that casts a long shadow over the classroom.
“Hold on, Becka. Relax. This isn’t you.” I look at her red face and tightly closed fists. “Well, okay, this is kind of you. But not really.”
“How dare you insult the Minister!” She raises a fist and moves to punch me into the face.
“Whoa!” I shout, ducking just in time.
Her fist connects with the wall behind me, making a hand-shaped dent in the plaster. She spins around to face me, her eyes wild with hate. That alien mysterious voice wasn’t kidding. Orientation really does a number on you. But how did they get affected so badly while I got out okay?
Seventh Grade vs. the Galaxy Page 10
