CHAPTER TWO
Space Savior of the Universe
I.
Chuck and I wandered around Kings Town in the ice-cold weather. It was ridiculous of Nog to have us do this. We were wading through a few inches of snow, slick ice patches and chilly winds that kept stinging our cheeks.
We made our way out of the countryside and into the old part of Kings Town – the historical part. All the stores and stuff closed up early in this part of town, so there wasn’t much activity now.
I held the space detector out in front of me, but there were no blinking lights at all, nor were there any beeping sounds.
“Maybe this thing doesn’t even work, man,” I said to Chuck as we walked side by side, bundled up to the extreme.
“Who knows,” Chuck said. “Hey, what if this space debris is something we don’t want to run into. Once again, Nog isn’t thinking about our safety.”
“He never does,” I agreed. He definitely wasn’t thinking of our safety. But you know I ain’t worried! We could handle anything that came our way. “We’re heroes, Chuck. In the movies, the hero always comes out on top. We’ll come out on top even if it’s something we have to fight, blow up, incinerate or melt. Trust me.”
“We don’t have any weapons.”
“Maybe you don’t have any weapons, but I’m packing two experienced guns of domination right here,” I said, kissing the coat sleeve that covered my biceps.
I noticed Chuck shaking his head.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re different, Scout. Ever since we got back from Bethani, you act all high and mighty. Like you’re a gift from the Heavens.”
Was he serious? Of course I was a gift from the Heavens! “Dude, we went into space, to another galaxy, and rescued people, while taking out aliens left and right! You’re a gift from the Heavens too, bro. We’re awesome now.”
If people only knew what I had done, I’d be considered a celebrity. I should have sponsors and stuff. I should have my own brand of cologne or dog toys. I should be on a cereal box like one of those Olympic guys. Better yet, I should have my own cereal: Scout Brookios with Marshmallow Enhancers. It’d be delicious.
“All I’m saying is that you better watch yourself. No one likes a jerk,” Chuck said.
I could tell he wasn’t going to let it go, so as always, I’d be the bigger man and drop it.
We walked around Kings Town for almost three hours and came up with absolutely nothing on the space detector. We decided to call it a night, so we returned the equipment to Nog and went home.
Morning came too quickly. It was Thursday – one more day until the Christmas dance. I was out of time to ask Mandy, so today would have to be the day.
I rubbed my eyes and let them adjust to the light that was shining in my face. It was blinding. “What the heck is this light?” I said out loud, unable to see anything.
“Sorry, Scout. I didn’t mean to wake you,” I heard Uncle Jones softly say. The light flipped off and my room was still dark. I looked at my clock radio and it said it was only a little after 4am.
“Uncle Jones, what are you doing in my room?” I asked, flipping on the lamp that sat on my nightstand. Uncle Jones sat down on my bed holding a flashlight and wearing a very short pair of pajama shorts and no shirt. His swirly chest hair was hypnotizing.
“I was just making sure you were ok. I’ve been hearing weird noises all night outside, and I could have sworn I heard them inside. Like footsteps or something. Like someone was walking around.”
“Footsteps?”
“Yeah. I was making my rounds. Your mother slept right through my shining light, Mark was already up writing songs or something, and I woke you up by accident. Come, look here.”
I climbed out of bed and followed Uncle Jones to the window. He carefully pulled back the curtains and pointed across the street. I looked closely and saw Butch McSides sitting on top of the moving van in the road, staring up at the night sky.
“What is that guy doing?” I asked.
“Who even knows,” Uncle Jones answered. “He’s a very peculiar guy.”
“Should we call the cops?”
“For what? Cause he’s sitting on top of a truck at 4am for no reason? No. You said he got a little too close for comfort yesterday, and now he’s being weird again. Your mom will be at work all day today, so I think I’ll invite Mr. McSides over for a beer to see what he’s all about.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Of course. I’ll feel him out, and if nothing comes of it, I can at least scare him into leaving you alone.”
I nodded. Sounded like a plan.
II.
The actual morning did come quickly after Uncle Jones had left my room. I fell back to sleep for a couple hours and woke up just in time to get ready for school and head for the bus stop.
As I stood in the falling snow, waiting for my bus to arrive, I couldn’t help but notice that Butch McSides was out and about. He was shoveling the snow in his driveway. He saw me and waved.
I didn’t respond.
“Scout! What’s happening?” Butch called out from his yard.
I still didn’t respond. I saw him drop his shovel and start to walk towards me. This guy was creeping me out hardcore! I heard the roar of the school bus turn the corner and onto my street. I saw it coming.
“Scout! If I could just get a moment of your time!” Butch called, trucking through the snowy street.
“No, man, I got school,” I said, just as the bus pulled up and opened its door. I hopped on, picked out a seat near the back and looked out the window as the bus moved on. I saw Butch walking back towards his house.
Mr. Hobbs was droning on and on about triangles and squares or something, so I instantly tuned out. I looked around the classroom and watched all of the students trying to learn. They had no idea what was out there, hanging out in the universe. They were so ignorant to it. I glanced at the wall by the door and there was a plaque hanging by the light switches. All of the classrooms had them. They were all engraved with ‘Never Forget Matt Radar – He Will Be Forever In Our Hearts’.
After the police finally called off the search for Radar in January, his parents moved away. It was too hard for them to be in the town where they raised their little hellion. Everything reminded them of him and the constant outreach from the community only deepened their emotions. They needed a fresh start.
Only a few of us new the truth, but it was a truth that couldn’t be told unfortunately. His parents never got the closure they were hoping for. I had halfheartedly suggested to Nog that we should go back to Bethani and track him down, but he wasn’t game for that. He didn’t want to chance opening up any portals again. I didn’t blame him. There was no telling what the Frooginites would have done this time. Nog also said that there was no reason to even think he was alive still. I sort of disagreed with that. After all, when we left him, the Frooginites were only beating him to a pulp and not actually killing him. That always intrigued me.
There was a knock on the classroom door and Jeffrey Shuster, a kid in my grade, walked in with a note. He was on office duty – he’d take notes around to the different teachers throughout his assigned period and help with summoning people who were in trouble.
Mr. Hobbs took a look at the note and looked up, straight at me. “Scout and Chuck – it appears you guys have been busted again. Principal’s office – NOW!”
I wondered what was up. I gathered my stuff and walked to the front of the classroom, passing Philly. I looked at him and he gave me a very bland stare and then looked back down at his papers.
Chuck followed me out into the hallway and we headed for Smidgeon’s office.
“What do you think is going on?” Chuck asked.
I shrugged.
We entered Smidgeon’s office and instantly noticed that Nog and Smidgeon were standing there. There was an overwhelming sense of seriousness going on. Nog was holding the space detector, and it appeared to have a good majority of the lights on it blinking accompanied by an occasional beeping sound.
“I was out doing some searching this morning before my first class,” Nog began, “and my space detector started getting all beepy and flashy. Depending upon where in the school we are, the lights seem to fluctuate.”
Nogger handed the space detector to me. “I need to get to class, but under the cover of you two being busted by Smidgey, you need to go scour the school grounds and report back to me. Whatever crash landed is definitely on the property.”
Smidgeon crossed his arms and stood tall. “You guys can sneak out the side entrance near the nurse’s office. There’s no one ever in there.”
Nog bolted for his classroom and Smidgeon escorted Chuck and myself through the teachers lounge and into the nurse’s office where an emergency exit was.
Chuck and I were out in the elements. The elements of it being freaking cold and us not having our jackets with us!
“C’mon, Chuck, let’s search for this thing before we freeze to death,” I said as we started to march through the shin-deep snow.
We made our way around the side of the building where the senior parking lot was. I kept checking the space detector periodically to scope the light situation. About half of the lights on this thing were blinking and it was beeping slightly. I aimed it out into the parking lot and the lights seemed to fade a bit.
“Keep it aimed up the side of the school, bro,” Chuck instructed me. I did as he said and the lights that had faded came back. We were on the right track.
The wall we were following eventually ended and we turned the corner to face the football field. The lights picked up some heat. We hugged the side of the building some more and moved towards the football field.
“Stop,” Chuck said. I did as he said again. I was getting tired of taking orders from this guy.
“What?” I asked, irritated. I looked at Chuck and I could see he was noticeably getting nervous. He looked around and blinked heavily.
“I don’t know if we should be doing this alone,” he said.
“Don’t be a wuss, dude. We got this,” I assured him as I began to walk straight ahead again.
“Scout, stop.” Chuck grabbed me by the sleeve of my shirt and I shrugged him off.
“What, Chuck? What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
Chuck just stared at me. He didn’t say anything.
“Fine, I’ll do it myself,” I shouted.
“Oh, of course! You’ll do it yourself!” Chuck was obviously upset at me. “You’re Scout Brooks, Space Savior of the Universe! Leave it to you to find all the space debris!”
“Shut up, guy! What do you know about anything anyway? It was me who saved everyone on Bethani. You were just ‘there’.”
“Everyone? You didn’t save everyone, Scout. Radar? Homeless Harry? You left them for dead.”
“I had no choice about Radar, and as for Harry, did you even remember him? He was just randomly thrown into the rescue mission for no reason and there was a lot of laser battles going on. He was easy to forget.”
I noticed Chuck was facing me, but looking past me. What the heck was he looking at? It was just a wall behind me. I turned around and realized we were standing by a classroom window - Mr. Hobbs’ classroom. The entire class was gathered around watching Chuck and I argue outside with the space detector. Mr. Hobbs’ face and ears were bright red with anger. The only thing missing was the sound of a squealing teapot.
I saw Phil’s head slowly rise from behind a few of the students. We made eye contact. This wasn’t going to help our situation with him. I turned back to Chuck.
“We gotta bolt, brother,” I calmly said. Chuck turned and ran back the way we came from and I dashed in the other direction, towards the football field.
I looked at the space detector as I approached the fenced-in field and noticed that just about all the lights were illuminated and this thing was beeping like a madwoman. I aimed it towards the bleachers – it must have been behind them. I climbed over the fence and fell flat on my face. I coughed out the powdery snow, picked up the space detector and jogged over to the bleachers.
All of the lights on the space detector were lit up. It was here for sure. I looked around and noticed a humongous pile of out-of-place snow. I walked over to it, cautiously of course. I set the space detector down and brushed some of the snow off from the pile. There was a black object underneath. I brushed more and more snow off until I was finally able to see what had crashed here in Kings Town a few days ago.
It was a pod of some kind - a black, cylindrical pod with a small window at one end of it. Without digging the entire thing out, I estimated that it must have been about ten feet long and maybe four feet across. It was a very polished black color, barely a scrape on it.
“Professor Nog, are you there?” I asked, hoping he was in my head. I waited for a few minutes and then remembered he was teaching his class.
III.
Mr. Hobbs had told on us and Principal Smidgeon pretended to yell at us in his office to humor him. I told Chuck and Smidgeon what I had found and then he let us go back to class.
Lunchtime finally came and I unpacked my ham and swiss on rye and baggie of cheddar chips and started to feast. Chuck sat down across from me.
“Sorry about yelling earlier,” he said to me. I responded quietly, only nodding. Chuck opened his lunch bag and started to eat as well. It was quiet for a minute before he spoke up again.
“What do you think that pod thing is?”
“I’m not sure. There didn’t seem to be any markings on it at all.”
“You said there was a small window? Could you see inside of it?”
“I didn’t look all that closely, but it appeared to be empty.”
The table shook as Phil plopped down next to us.
“I can’t stay, I’m having lunch with Lamar,” he stated. “He’s in line right now. But I wanted to ask you guys what you were doing outside during class, holding some glow-in-the-dark iron?”
Neither Chuck nor myself answered. What could we possibly say that would sound believable?
“Causing mischief?” Phil asked.
We didn’t respond. I had a hard time taking my focus off his legendary mustache.
“I know you guys have secrets,” Phil said, running his finger across the ‘stache, basically showing it off. “I didn’t want to believe that note last year, but you guys constantly act suspicious. Something obviously is going on, and if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But I just got some news this morning that I would love to share with you.”
Chuck and I looked at each other and then back at Phil.
“What is it, Philly?” I asked, genuinely curious.
He smiled. “Tell me your secret first.”
I didn’t respond. Chuck sat there quiet as well.
“Well, until you do, you wont know my news. It’s big, guys,” Phil said as he stood up and then trotted off three tables away where Lamar was just sitting down with a hot meal.
“We should talk to Nog, and see if we can let Phil in on this,” Chuck said. “He hates us right now, Scout.”
“We can’t.”
“Maybe he can get a custodial job at Fort Nog’s,” Chuck insisted.
“We can’t, Chuck. Think of how dangerous being in the E.I.A. has been. Do you want Phil’s life to be in jeopardy too?”
Chuck didn’t answer.
“Hey!” a voice cried out from behind me. I turned around and saw Nog running through the cafeteria, his red tie flapping over his shoulder. He stopped at our table. “How dare you boys deface my car in the parking lot by carving key streaks through it? You’re in so much trouble! Come with me, right now!”
Chuck and I were startled, confused, and embarrassed. The whole cafeteria was looking at us, most of them laughing. We started to pack our lunches up.
“Leave them! There’s no need for lunch where you’re going!” he shouted, adjusting his glasses. We did as Nog said and followed him.
Up in Nog’s empty classroom, Chuck and I sat in the front row as he stood in front of us, super curious about what I saw.
“First of all, don’t talk in my head when I’m teaching, Scout. You know I can’t answer, bro! Secondly, what was it you saw exactly? Smidgeon said it was some sort of space pod?” Nog questioned.
“Yeah. I mean it was long, maybe about ten feet or so. It had a small window near the top. I didn’t open it or anything, so I don’t know what was inside.”
“Okay, I’ll have to call a team from Fort Nog’s to come and retrieve it,” Nog said, then turning his attention to Chuck. “Mr. Taylor, I need a huge favor.”
Chuck sat up from his slouched position. “What is it?”
Nog looked at me first. “Scout, you can go now. We’ll meet up later.”
I stood up and made my way to the door. I turned around and saw Nog lean in to discuss something with Chuck. I left the room before I heard anything.
IV.
History was my last period of the day. Mrs. Viper had assigned a project that she wanted us in teams for. We were supposed to build a diagram depicting a certain event in U.S. History. A space rescue perhaps?
As soon as she said, “Pair up”, I immediately walked across the room to where Mandy Lee was sitting. She was scouring her backpack for a pencil, I assumed. I stood by her side:
“You want to be partners, Mandy?” I asked her.
She looked up not realizing it was me at first. She forced a smile. “Um, I was actually going to see if Audrey wanted to pair up.”
“Oh,” I said, watching as Audrey was making her way over from the other side of the room. “Well, then I have a quick question for you.”
“What is it, Scout?”
“Would you go to the Christmas dance with me tomorrow?”
The world became quiet, and even the pins across the globe hesitated to drop. She didn’t say anything. I gulped, and it sounded like everyone in the school could hear the saliva clanking down my throat. A shaky and hopeful smile pierced across my face. She finally answered my question after years of me just standing there:
“No. I’m sorry, Scout, but you’re just different than you were our freshman year.”
“But I saved your life.”
“Which I will always be grateful for, but you’ve become this very cocky and arrogant boy.”
“No I haven’t,” I said, getting annoyed.
“Yeah you have, Scout. Remember the first day of school this year when you shouted ‘Release the Kraken’ in the cafeteria and then mooned the entire boys lacrosse team? Or last week when Mr. Anderson assigned us to write a paper on an American hero, and you wanted me to write it about you?”
“But…”
“No buts, Scout. I don’t want to go to the dance with you,” Mandy said, just as Audrey pulled up a chair next to her. I stepped back. “Bye, Scout,” Mandy said.
I just stared at her. How dare she! I saved her life from alien robots, for God’s sake, and this is what she thinks of me? She sucks.
After school had let out, I took the bus home to change clothes before I headed off to Fort Nog’s. I wanted to see what exactly the analysis was on the space pod.
I walked in the house and immediately saw Uncle Jones and Butch McSides sitting on the couch laughing hard, cold ones in their hands. Uncle Jones looked up at me and wiped the tears from his face.
“Scout! Welcome home!” Uncle Jones said, standing up and coming over to give me a drunken hug. Butch stood up and stumbled towards me and extended his hand.
“What’s up, Holmes?” he said. I refused to shake his hand. What was going on here? I didn’t want this creep in my house. Why was Uncle Jones getting along with him so well?
“What, no shake?” Butch said. “Are you more of a malt guy?”
Uncle Jones cracked up at Butch’s poor excuse of a joke.
“My God,” Uncle Jones said nudging me with his elbow, “this guy is hilarious! I don’t know why he creeped you out so much, Scout.”
I rolled my eyes and headed straight for the stairs. This was ridiculous. I walked into my room and shut the door. I stripped down to my smiley face boxers to the sound of Uncle Jones and creepy neighbor, Butch McSides, hamming it up downstairs. I threw on some cargo pants and a hooded sweatshirt that was designed by Chuck. The image was of a cartoon rhino wearing sunglasses and a bathing suit and said “Rhino what you’re thinking” underneath.
Chuck was making some mad cash with this little novelty shirt venture he had going on. He supplied Jakon with at least twenty shirts every couple weeks, and per their agreement, earned half of the cut. He probably had a good little stash of cash somewhere.
“Hey, Scout!” I heard Uncle Jones call from downstairs.
I opened my door as I threw on a baseball cap. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to go over to Butch’s house and help him unload some boxes. Cool?”
“Cool,” I responded, not really caring. But if it got those two out of the house, then it was fine by me. I was getting ready to leave anyway.
I heard the front door open and close, and then went to my window and watched as the two of them carefully navigated across the snowy road. Uncle Jones slipped a couple times, but Butch was right there to prevent the falls. They better not become best friends or anything.
Butch turned around and looked back at our house, and then up to my window. I watched him carefully for a moment as he ominously smirked and winked at me. Was that a message of some kind, or just a drunken tic?
V.
I journeyed hard through the snow and out into the countryside of Kings Town. Next year I’d be able to drive, so no more of this nomad crap. It took thirty or forty minutes, but I finally made it to Nog’s farm.
I made my way straight to the barn and opened the doors just enough to slip right in. When I walked in, I was stunned. The I.P.S. – the shuttle that took us to Bethani and then vanished into the darkness of space – was back. It was sitting in the barn like a plane in a hanger. There were scientists and engineers all around it and working on it. I can’t believe we finally got it back. To my right, I saw Farrow instructing some of the younger scientists. I walked over and waited until he was done talking.
“When did the I.P.S. get back?” I asked.
Farrow used a small cloth to clean his narrow glasses before putting it back into the pocket in his lab coat. He ran his hand across his bald head and thought for a moment. “Well, probably about three or four hours ago, man.”
I nodded and looked back at the shuttle. “Was D.R. Fritz on board?”
“Yeah. Jakon took Fritz down to one of the labs to try and get inside the program to see where everything went wrong.”
“Where’s Nog?”
“Down in the labs. You can go find him if you want. I need to oversee this situation a little more. This thing has come back with butt-loads of information, brother. On space, alien worlds, mysterious objects in space; you name it, we probably got it.”
“Good deal, man,” I said. I slapped Farrow a quick high-five and headed for the horse stall that was guarded by the armed and dangerous, Marco and Hastings. Alright, well, not dangerous. They were pretty soft guys actually. Marco always had some lame joke to tell, so when he asked me “What do you call a pony’s cough?” I wasn’t too surprised.
“I don’t know, what?”
“A little hoarse,” Marco chuckled as he unleashed the punch line. “Get it, Scout? Cause we’re in a horse stall?”
“Yeah I get it, Marco.”
“It’s just a little equestrian humor,” Marco added.
“Yeah, no I got it, dude.” I looked at Hastings, who was holding on tightly to his laser rifle. “How do you deal with this, Hastings?”
Hastings smiled and shook his head. Seems like that’s all he ever did.
“Okay, boys, let me in,” I demanded. The two guards moved out of the way and I entered the horse stall and hit the elevator button on the back wall.
The elevator took me down about three levels to the Experiment Labs. I walked down a long white hallway and to the magnetic key operated door at the end of it. I knocked, since I didn’t have a key.
The door beeped and I heard it unlatch from the locking mechanism. I opened the door and walked in, removing my coat. Nog was sitting at the computer, staring at images that had been downloaded from the I.P.S.
“Nogger, what’s up, bro,” I said, walking up to him.
“Scout, my brotha, what’s the deal?” he asked, not removing his eyes from the space images. “It’s astonishing, what the I.P.S. has seen.”
“What about Fritz? Any word on his little malfunction last year?”
“Jakon’s down on level four looking into it right now. You can go ask him if you want.”
“Sure.”
Nog handed me the magnetic key card. “You’ll need this to get into the labs down there.” He looked up at me, “Also, we’ve been developing something here for you, Scout. I’ll show it to you tomorrow – my engineers say it’ll be done then.”
“Oh, ok, cool. What is it?” I asked.
“Now that would ruin the surprise, guy! Just leave it alone until tomorrow,” Nog shouted.
“What about that space pod? What’s the word?”
“I have a team studying it now. It appears to be an escape pod of some sort. Almost like it was jettisoned from a larger ship. That’s probably what the giant mass Jakon detected was. Some sort of monstrous spaceship.”
“Was there anyone in it?”
“No, it was empty. Whatever was inside that pod though, got out and is somewhere here in Kings Town. I need to organize a search team for it.”
There was a knock at the door and Nog pressed a little button next to the computer that unlocked it. I watched as Chuck came in carrying a folder in his hand.
“Hey, Scout,” he said smiling, “What do you call a pony’s cough?”
“A little hoarse,” I said. “Marco is rehashing already?”
Chuck handed Nog the folder. “Here you go, Professor,” he said, “just as you ordered.”
Nog opened it and looked at a picture inside. I tried to peek a quick glance. I saw it was a drawing of an awesome looking cartoon frog with an attitude, chomping down hard on a smoking cigar.
“That’s cool,” I said. “What is that?”
Nog quickly shut the folder. “It’s a surprise. Go on, Scout, get out of here. Weren’t you going to go check on Jakon or something?”
I shook my head as I walked for the door. There were too many secrets in the organization.
I took the elevator down another level to four and got out. I walked down another white hallway and saw the Experiment Lab was up ahead. I swiped the key card in front of the sensor and the door opened.
I walked in, but didn’t see anyone. “Jakon? You in here, brotha?”
I made my way through the lab, which was full of science equipment, beakers and machines that meant nothing to me. I walked into another room that was connected to the lab and noticed that most of the lights were off. There were a few on in the corner of the room, so I walked over to the steel tables that sat beneath them.
There were mechanical parts scattered all over the few tables. I tried to figure out what they were all from, and finally realized when I saw the head of D.R. Fritz sitting on the edge of one of the tables. Jakon had taken him completely apart? Why? He just needed access to the motherboard.
I heard someone talking and turned around. On the other side of the room, I saw a door that was opened just a crack. There was light coming from inside, as well as the man’s voice that I was hearing. I approached it, seeing that above the door it said, ‘Communications Department’.
I looked through the crack in the door and saw Jakon sitting down, his back facing me, at one of the computers. He had on a pair of headphones and was speaking into one of the microphones. I tried to listen to what he was saying:
“He’s already in place. He arrived a few days ago,” he spoke into the microphone. “Are the Slimeborgs ready for action?” he asked.
What on Earth was he talking about? It was weird and suspicious for sure. I was starting to get a little nervous and the juices in my stomach were starting to gurgle with the hopes for a release. I clenched to avoid such a release.
“Good. I’ll radio in and tell him