Shock the Monkey, page 12
Andi heard the pod being launched, but with her sensors already overloaded by the ship’s various other sounds and malfunctions, she couldn’t identify what that particular noise had been. Even so, she hurried to investigate.
Once in the kitchen, she saw the cat pawing at the door to the mudroom and urgently meowing. Andi was not particularly fond of felines, and even less fond of this one.
“What is it? Are Miss Luella and Noah in there?”
The cat just meowed again in response and pawed at the door.
As an android, she could not be influenced by the cat’s telepathic powers—no images were projected into her mind, or thoughts pulled out of it. But the creature’s behavior seemed to indicate some urgency—and maybe it was trying to tell her that Miss Luella and Noah were in trouble.
She shooed the cat out of the way, opened the door, and stepped into the mud room. And immediately found that something was very wrong. Because to the left of the door, there was just a big empty corner. Hadn’t there been a little bathroom there?
Then the cat pushed the mudroom door closed behind her. Only then did Andi realize her folly. Because the moment the mudroom door was closed, the cat hit the button that opened the house’s back door.
Andi was sucked out of the airlock into the emptiness of space, proving that Mittens was, indeed, a very bad kitty.
13
Carnivorous or Noncarnivorous?
CLAIRE WASN’T BEING TREATED BADLY BY THE THING THAT HAD taken over Raymond Balding-Stalker’s body—but his associate, the woman who looked and smelled like death, was horribly rude.
“What is your problem?” she snapped. “Why won’t you eat these perfectly good nutritional pellets we’ve given you?”
“It’s dog food!” complained Claire.
To which the rotting woman just scoffed. “So? Earth mammals are Earth mammals. I don’t see the problem. The bowl even has your name on it. You’re just too picky.”
The Raymond-thing was much more accommodating. “Explain to us what kind of nutrition you require, and we’ll do our best to provide it.”
The rotting woman rolled her swollen, puffy eyes. “Why must you coddle her?”
“Because,” said the Raymond-thing, “if she is to take her rightful place, she must be treated with courtesy and respect.”
The woman waved her hand dismissively, and the hand promptly fell off.
“Ew,” said Claire. “Like big, fat, supersized ew.”
“Oh, get over it,” said the woman.
“Don’t mind UnEqua,” said the Raymond-thing. “As you say on Earth, her bark is worse than her bite.”
“UnEqua,” said Claire. “Interesting name.”
The woman stiffened. “My name is ≠,” she said. “Only friends get to call me UnEqua—and certainly not a lowly human.”
“Claire will call you whatever she likes! We will treat her with respect!”
UnEqua grumbled, then stormed off with her hand, looking for some underling who could sew it back on.
“Thank you,” said Claire, then circled back to their original conversation. “So, can we ditch the dog food?”
“Certainly,” said the Raymond-thing, and he removed the plastic pet food bowl. “What would you prefer?”
“Well, lately I’ve been vegan,” she said. “So maybe an açai bowl.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Claire huffed in exasperation. “Fine. Then a salad.”
“And what might that be?”
“Plants! Just bring me plants!”
“Of course. Carnivorous or noncarnivorous?”
“Noncarnivorous!” she shouted, getting increasingly annoyed. “I want to eat them; I don’t want them to eat me!”
“Well, I just thought you might like the challenge. I’ll be back shortly, Your Highness.”
He left, and Claire crossed her arms, still not sure whether or not he was mocking her by calling her that.
Raymond Balding-Stalker—the actual one—was awake, alert, and aware of everything that was happening. Yes, the Usurper had taken over his body, but it could only push him down, not out. He still felt everything, from the black eye that Ogden had given him, to how uncomfortably yucky his black ninja outfit had become. Apparently, these Usurpers didn’t understand the concept of a change of clothes. It was a concept that Raymond himself often failed to grasp, but now he resolved that, if he survived this, he’d listen to his mother and change his clothes on a regular basis.
The Usurper had tried to lull him to sleep, but Raymond wasn’t having it. Eventually, it just accepted that Raymond would be there, watching and listening. He was now just a spectator within his own body—which wasn’t all that different from how he usually felt, so it wasn’t that hard to adjust.
And besides, there were advantages.
For instance, he had never had the nerve to speak to Claire in any meaningful way—but this alien body-snatcher was a commanding presence, charming in a way that Raymond was not. He quickly came to realize that this whole body-snatcher thing could work in his favor.
Hey, he shouted from deep down in his spine, or wherever it was his consciousness had been pushed. Hey, alien body-snatcher, I want to talk to you.
“Quiet,” it said, “or I’ll kick you down even harder.”
You could do that, said Raymond, but wouldn’t you rather know how to make Claire happy?
“I can manage without your assistance.”
Really? said Raymond. You know, I could have told you that Purina Dog Chow was a mistake. But you didn’t ask.
Ø sighed. “And we bought a thirty-pound bag.”
Well, it just so happens that I’m not just an expert on human stuff—I’m an expert on Claire Jensen.
That got Ø’s attention “Is that so…”
Oh, yeah! I know everything about her. What she likes, what she hates, what she does when she thinks no one’s looking.
“So… you are a student of the observational sciences!”
You could say that, Raymond said. Let me help you… and maybe we can both get what we want.…
Claire found herself pacing with nothing much to do and getting hungrier by the minute. They hadn’t even told her how long it would take to get to this planet that she now supposedly owned. Earth must have been billions of miles away by now. She wondered what her friends must think, and worried if Jaxon Youngblood had seen her abducted. And if he had, would he write a song about it?
When the Raymond-thing returned, it had a silver tray with actual human food.
“Here you are,” he said. “A pulverized-and-baked sheet of grain, rolled over shredded plant matter and congealed bean-scum.”
“A Caesar tofu wrap!” said Claire. “My favorite!”
Then he pulled out a scroll and unrolled it to reveal a digital screen no thicker than a single sheet of paper. “On this device, you’ll find the fifth season of Angry Debutantes already loaded and ready to watch.”
Which confused Claire. It was her favorite show, but a fifth season? “Can’t be,” she said. “Angry Debutantes was canceled after season four.”
The Raymond-thing smirked. “Here, perhaps. But we downloaded it from a parallel universe where there were two more seasons!”
That made Claire actually gasp. Sure enough, when she tapped the screen, season five, episode one popped up. This was definitely worth being abducted by aliens!
“We’ll be arriving on your planet shortly. Everyone at the palace is anxiously awaiting your arrival.”
“A palace?” said Claire. “I have a palace?”
“Of course you do,” said the Raymond-thing. “And a planet full of subjects for you to rule with gentle benevolence.”
Well, that certainly changed things, didn’t it. It gave Claire a lot to think about.
Satisfied, the Raymond-thing turned to go, but Claire reached out and grabbed his hand in unexpected gratitude—unexpected even to her.
“Thank you, alien thing,” she said.
“As I said, my name is Ø. But my friends call me Slash,” he said. “And I certainly hope I can count you among my friends.”
“All right then. Thank you, Slash.”
While deep inside, Raymond shivered with joy that Claire Jenson was finally holding his hand.
14
“⊕ςΦ↓δψ§!”
IN THE BASEMENT OF THE BLUE HOUSE THAT WAS CAREENING wildly through space, Quantavius Kratz put down the wrench, having had no success shutting down the noisy “furnace.”
“It’s no use. This blasted thing must be controlled by a thermostat upstairs.”
Agent Knell folded her arms. “I’m beginning to think this may be more than an issue with a furnace.”
“Occam’s razor, Nell. Occam’s razor.”
Kratz was referring to the elegant and simple concept that suggested that, more often than not, the obvious answer is the correct one. And in this case, a furnace-looking thing doing a furnace-like thing was, more often than not, a furnace. Occam’s razor, however, is also a fine recipe for answers that are spectacularly wrong.
When Ogden and Sahara had hurried back up to the flight deck, they thought Miss Luella was right behind them. When she didn’t show, they began to worry. Neither of them could even drive, much less pilot an out-of-control interstellar starship. The closest Ogden had ever come to driving was the Autopia at Disneyland—and even then, he had somehow managed to launch his car into the Finding Nemo submarine ride, sending Dory into the mouth of Bruce the Shark, to the horror of little children watching through the submarine’s windows.
“Look at the controls,” Ogden said. “They look like two joysticks—I’ll bet one controls pitch and yaw, and the other one looks like a throttle.”
“You don’t need to mansplain, I see it myself!” said Sahara.
“It’s not mansplaining—I expound the same way to males and females.”
“Great, so can I throttle and expound you?”
The ship’s wobble was taking on epic proportions. The Christmas lights that had just a few minutes ago seemed so calming were spinning wildly before them.
“Why don’t you control thrust, and I’ll control attitude?” suggested Ogden.
“There’s already too much attitude!”
“Not that attitude—I mean the angle at which we’re flying.”
“Tumbling, you mean.”
“Right, and we have to stop the tumbling!”
Which neither of them knew how to do. Miss Luella should have been up here by now—it didn’t bode well that she wasn’t. “I think we’d better find Miss Luella!” said Sahara. “I’ll stay here to… to not make things worse. You go find her!”
Ogden didn’t argue. He ran downstairs, leaving Sahara to deal with the controls on her own. Sahara’s virtual driving skills far surpassed Ogden’s—in fact, she always killed at Mario Kart—but flying a house was an entirely different proposition. And while Ogden was willing to experiment with the joysticks, Sahara didn’t want to touch anything unless she knew precisely what it did. It was a wise decision, because the thing that Ogden thought was the throttle was, in fact, the self-destruct lever.
Half a minute later, Ogden came racing back up the stairs, out of breath, with Mittens trailing behind.
“It’s no use! They’re gone!”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“I mean disappeared, vanished. Noah, Miss Luella, and Andi are nowhere in the house!”
Sahara tried to wrap her mind around this but just couldn’t do it. “You mean to tell me that it’s now just you, me, and a cat hurtling through space?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Around them, the guts of the universe buckled and twisted and squirmed, and finally spat them out. The shooting multicolored lights were gone. Now they were tumbling end over end through regular space, which wasn’t any better at all.
Just then Mittens jumped up and strolled casually across the control panel as cats are wont to do, randomly stepping on buttons with his paws. But perhaps it wasn’t as random as it seemed, because the sound of the engine changed, and the tumbling house stopped tumbling. In a few moments it had stabilized and flipped itself facing foundation-first toward a rapidly approaching planet.
“Do you think that’s the planet we’re looking for?” Sahara asked. “Where they took Claire?”
In response, the cat projected into their minds an image of itself giving them a thumbs-up—which was both disturbing and confusing, because it didn’t have thumbs—but they got the idea.
“We’d better strap in,” said Sahara. “I think we’re landing.”
“Or crashing,” said Ogden.
“Well, either way this trip is about to end.”
So they dropped their butts down into the flight deck chairs, which immediately gripped them in terror. Then Sahara and Ogden gritted their teeth as they hit the planet’s atmosphere, hoping beyond hope that Mittens knew what he was doing.
Meanwhile, the escape pod tumbled through the void, in a completely different direction from the house, and Noah didn’t have any idea of what void it tumbled through, because the little bathroom/escape pod had no windows.
“Well, this is a fine mess,” grumbled Miss Luella as she sat on the edge of the bathtub. “I can’t imagine what Mittens was thinking.”
“He was thinking, ‘I’m gonna steal this ship, and eject its owner into deep space.’”
But Miss Luella waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, pishposh, that crafty feline is more elegant than that. Plans within plans within plans. Mark my words, there is more to this than you think!” Then she chuckled. “That cat is going to get an earful when I catch up with him.”
“If you catch up with him,” Noah pointed out. “How do you know we’ll even survive? Is there enough air in here? Water? What happens when we get hungry?”
The old woman smirked. “I’m sure you’ll be able to catch a few more flies.”
That only served to make Noah feel that his stomach might invert again. He swallowed. Hard.
“My dear boy, this escape pod is designed to sustain us as long as necessary. There’s running water, the medicine chest has dehydrated food rations, and we have a commode to relieve ourselves, with the shower curtain providing a wee bit of privacy. In short, we’ll be fine.”
“We could be out here forever.…”
“Nonsense! My escape pod is programmed to find the nearest inhabitable planet. And since we were traveling deep within the universe’s unthinkables, it will likely spit us toward a planet in no time. Give or take a theoretical eternity.”
Noah sighed. He thought of his friends, who still may not have any idea that he was gone. Andi would put two and two together, and tell them exactly what had happened, though. That is, unless that miserable cat had found a way to disable her. He wanted to pound the walls. He hated being helpless, but right now, he had no choice but to tumble blindly through space in a bathroom that had become an outhouse. A way-outhouse.
“I do love an adventure,” said the old woman with an excited little shiver. She had said as much when she first encountered them. “And,” she added, “we already know that you do, too.”
He gave a blue-red mandrill blush, remembering how he’d been moaning and groaning about how uninteresting his life-as-nobody had become. Even so, adventures were always better after you knew you had survived them.
“My friends need me…,” he insisted.
But Miss Luella gave him a very pointed look. “Do they really?”
“Of course they do!”
“Seems to me it’s more about you needing them.”
Her words must have struck a chord because they made Noah uncomfortable. “So? We need one another.”
“True, true,” Miss Luella admitted. “But I get the feeling that you’re so used to them being part of your fiascos that you won’t let them have a fiasco of their own.”
“But… but what if they’re lost without me?”
“Well… considering our current position, I’d say we’re the ones who are lost.”
Noah couldn’t argue the logic of that. Yes, he felt protective of Ogden and Sahara, but was it because he believed they wouldn’t make it without him…
Or was he afraid they might actually be fine?
Even without a telepathic cat to tell her what he was thinking, Miss Luella seemed to know. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Friends don’t let friends be sidekicks,” she said. “Let them take care of their business. You and I can have our own adventure.…” Then she paused for a moment, sensing at the same moment Noah did, a slight change to their environment. “And, as it seems to be getting a bit warm in here, our new adventure is about to start. Because the heat shields have encountered an atmosphere!”
With all the heat and vibration of reentry, Noah expected the landing to be rough, but it wasn’t. Just a smooth touchdown as the bathroom/escape pod’s landing struts kissed the ground.
“Well, that could have been worse, all considered,” said Miss Luella. “Can’t expect more from an escape pod.”
“No? How about blasting back off?”
“Sorry, dearie. I’m afraid escape pods are only designed for one-way trips.”
She glanced in the mirror over the sink, which now displayed strange symbols in some unearthly language.
“Ah! An argon and oxygen atmosphere!”
“Is that bad?”
“Not at all! It’s a little more oxygen than you’re used to—you might get a bit giddy, but otherwise, it’s perfect!” Then she went to the medicine chest. “Oh—before I forget.” She pulled out a little vial, opened it, and fished out what Noah at first thought was a pill. But it was moving. The little vile was full of little pink moving bugs.
“Here you go!” she said cheerfully. “Don’t eat it—it probably won’t taste as good as that fly.”
Noah grimaced at the thought and looked closely at the little beetle-like insect. It seemed harmless enough. “It looks like a ladybug.”
