Cosmic Correspondent

by Pen Avey

  So, the Mukonoids’ loss is my gain as Killian has got to be the most fascinating person I’ve ever met.

  3 Reasons why Killian is amazing:

  She smells of rawberries.

  She has the most bulbous head imaginable.

  She is 1.09 years older than me, yet she actually SPOKE to me.

  Andi is here, and he’s just pointed out that what she said to me was:

  “Stop following me around, freak.”

  I told Andi that it’s extremely rude to read other people’s private letters over their shoulder.

  I’m sure he is just feeling left out though, and jealous that Killian and I have formed such a strong bond. He told me yesterday that he’s going out with a fridge-freezer called Candy. I thought he’d made this up, but then he showed me the photo of her he had in his wallet. Sad to say it was obviously cut out from an old catalogue—I could even see part of the order number. When I mentioned this, he said it was her phone number. I didn’t push things, as I quite like the idea of double dating at some point in the future.

  In other news, I managed to sell all ninety-six of my puffle-sprout flapjacks. I say sold, but a more accurate description would be “gave away as a free gift.” I’ve been charging kids at our school a dollop each to have a go at Andi’s onboard games console at munch-time, which has been pre-loaded with—you’ve guessed it—Mortal Wombat. It was Andi’s idea really (he does occasionally have fleeting sparks of genius) and we just gave the flapjacks away as freebies to paying customers. We had to use five of them to bribe Mr Selfish, our munch-time snoopervisor, though. Luckily the only thing he likes more than getting kids into trouble is sprouts. That afternoon in assembly no one could hear our headmaster rambling on about school traditions over ninety-plus musical bottom parples. It was highly amusing—but it did whiff a bit!

  What makes you laugh on Earth? Tell me in your next letter,

  Your friend,

  Dethbert Jones.

  CHAPTER 6

  Saint Crustard’s Day

  Dear Earthling,

  Thank you for your letter and the popular Earth joke you sent me. I asked Andi “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and he responded with:

  “CHICKENS DO NOT NEED A REASON TO DO ANYTHING. THEY LIVE IN THE MOMENT.”

  Which is true, but not as funny as your answer.

  The most popular joke on Crank right now is this:

  Q: How many Mukonoids does it take to change a light-emitting diode?

  A: 7.26 recurring.

  I know—hilarious, right?

  Anyway, as you may have noticed from my letterhead, it’s Saint Crustard’s Day here on Crank. Do you know the story of Saint Crustard? One day a poor beggar was sitting down to eat a dry bowl of sneakle sponge. It stuck to the roof of his mouth and made him hack and cough. A kind passer-by noticed and went home to whip up a bowl of creamy crustard to accompany the beggar’s arid dessert. Well, the beggar turned out to be a really rich man from the telly box programme Undercover Zillionaire and was so grateful that he bought the passer-by a Sainthood and proclaimed him Saint Crustard (his real name was Norman Muggings). From that day forth we’ve celebrated Saint Crustard’s Day by having crustardy treats for breakfast, dinner, and tea.

  Today’s menu for me is:

  Another important part of Saint Crustard’s Day is the “Flinging Ceremony.” There is a parade in town this afternoon, and I’m part of it, as Saint Crustard is the patron saint of the Space Cadets’ Pudding Squadron. We will march to the town hall, where the Mayor will invite us to scoop up spoonfuls of crustard from a huge vat and fling it at the watching crowd.

  Unfortunately Andi isn’t coming as he says that crustard plays havoc with his circuitry. Last year some seeped into his analogue to digital converter and he spent the next three days believing he was a sloshing machine. Extremely annoying, especially when he was on the spin cycle.

  I really hope that Killian is there though, as I’m sure she’ll be impressed by my pudding pinging skills!

  Anyway, I’d better go and get ready for the parade. Do you have any special celebration days on Earth?

  Write soon,

  Your friend,

  Dethbert Jones.

  CHAPTER 7

  Dear Earthling,

  I was very interested to read your last letter about the celebration called “Christmas,” particularly the part about the person you call “Father Christmas.”

  To be perfectly honest, I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with a bearded man in a red suit breaking into my house at night, whether he was leaving gifts or not. Plus, you say that he delivers presents to good children all over the world in a matter of a few Earth hours? I talked to Andi about this, and we agree that he must have access to a time-freeze portal as there’s no other logical explanation for his activities. I find the whole thing fascinating and would very much like to discuss the portal theory with him. Unfortunately I can’t find his address on The Everything—perhaps he’s recently moved house? I’d be very grateful if you could let me know where he’s staying in your next letter.

  In other news, I’m a little bit injured at the moment, as at the Saint Crustard’s day parade I slipped in a puddle of pudding and broke my arm, so was denied the chance to impress Killian after all.

  On a more positive note I asked her to sign my plaster cast, which she initially kept refusing to do, but on the seventh attempt she cracked (I have a certain way with the ladies).

  Having a broken arm means that I’m excused from Physical Education at school, which is good for me as at the moment we’re playing Scuttleball. Do you have this game on Earth? It involves one player kicking a magnetic ball (a round one; not foot shaped) across the Scuttlecourt while the other players attempt to alter its course by using long metal Scuttlesticks.

  I wouldn’t mind the game so much, except that we have a new boy in our class called Stabwell Phillips who finds it amusing to whack my ankles with his Scuttlestick at every opportunity. He seemed to take an instant dislike to me even though I was friendly and took an interest in his bionic hand (which I initially thought was cool but now haunts my nightmares as I’ve seen him crush a stone with it).

  My mum says I should continue with the friendly approach and one of these days I’ll grind him down with kindness. I can’t wait that long though and think the best course of action would be to try some detective work to find out why he hates me so much.

  Wish me luck,

  Your friend,

  Dethbert Jones

  CHAPTER 8

  Dear Earthling,

  Thank you for your letter and the information you managed to get me regarding the whereabouts of Father Christmas. I looked up the North Pole on a holographic atlas in our school library and to be honest it’s quite a large area. I sent him a letter anyway (using the Mailington 220) and it came back the next day with a big bite taken out of it!

  I asked Dad to take a DNA sample from the bite mark and he discovered that it had been chewed by a creature called a “polar bear.” Have you heard of these? Apparently they’re extremely large and ferocious, so I fear your Father Christmas may have gone the way my letter nearly did. You could do an experiment to prove or disprove my theory, I suppose: if you’re good all year and he doesn’t arrive on Christmas Eve with presents, you’ll know why.

  Last week I had a breakthrough in my quest to discover why Stabwell Phillips is being so mean to me. It turns out that he’s the same Stabwell Phillips who I replaced in Space Cadets! He seems to resent me greatly because of the bump, so, armed with one of my fabulous vanilla cheese muffins, I decided to try a last ditch attempt to reason with him.

  I discovered that:

  a) He is totally unreasonable and reckons that if I hadn’t accepted the offer of a place in the Pudding Squadron they would have kept his place open until
after his bionic hand had been fitted.

  I counter argued that actually it was because he was so dumb he disintegrated his own hand, and that’s why he lost his spot.

  At which point I discovered that:

  b) He doesn’t seem to like vanilla cheese muffins judging by the way he crushed mine into a zillion crumbs with his bionic hand.

  So, I suppose I’ve got to live with the fact that there’s a boy in my class who hates me with a vengeance and is constantly armed with a powerful crushing device. I guess I’ll just have to watch my back (and any other sensitive, easily crushed parts of my body) in future.

  I’m off to Space Cadets. Tonight we’re being visited by a member of the Elite Space Rangers!

  His name is Murder Evans, and he’ll be giving a demonstration on self-defence when faced with aggressive lifeforms from other planets.

  I wonder if the same tactics could be used on sulky pre-teen boys with bionic limbs? I’ll let you know how it goes when I next write.

  Your friend,

  Dethbert Jones

  CHAPTER 9

  Dear Earthling,

  I was interested to read in your last letter about the self-defence class you go to on Earth called “karate.” It sounds very different than the self-defence that Murder Evans taught us at Space Cadets last week, which involved a lot of forward rolls.

  For example, you wrote about blocking attacks with your fists and attempting to chop your opponent with the side of your hand. Murder Evans said that if someone comes at us we should either crumple to the ground and play dead, or try to distract them with a fiddly task such as doing up buttons.

  I’m not entirely convinced these tactics would work on Stabwell Phillips, so I’m going to study karate instead. I showed Andi your letter, and he’s also interested. We’ve decided to form an after school karate club, and handed out flyers yesterday at munch-time.

  To be perfectly honest, I do have another motive (apart from defending myself from Stabwell and his arm of evil), as I’ve noticed that Killian seems to enjoy swinging people around by their collars if they’re getting on her nerves (namely me). She did intentionally poke me in the eye last week (I probably deserved it as I was looking through her letterbox at the time. Although I wouldn’t have been doing that if she’d have just opened the door after I’d been stood there knocking for so long), so I think karate might be her sort of thing.

  Anyway, I pushed a load of flyers through the letter slot on her door on the way home from school just in case (keeping my eyes well out of the way this time).

  Andi and I decided to have a practice meeting last night to set up the rules so that we’d seem more professional when we’re inundated with members. That didn’t go too well as we argued the whole time.

  Firstly, Andi wants to call the club The Karate Kids—a silly name that I am positive will never take off.

  Secondly, just because Andi is supplying the karate club headquarters (his garden shed) he seems to think he’s in charge of deciding the rules, so to keep it fair we played a game called bap, sandwich, bread sticks. Do you know it? Sandwich beats bap, bap beats breadsticks and breadsticks beats sandwich.

  Fortunately I won (Andi won the first two games, so I talked him into doing best of five) and here are the rules I came up with:

  One dollop each week to be paid by all members to cover training costs (i.e. my bus fare to Andi’s house).

  Maximum of ten members in the club (it’s not a very big shed).

  Andi to make up a suitable song to sing at the start of each meeting (this was Andi’s rule actually—I let him have his way because by then he’d started to sulk).

  The club is going to be called Karate Party as I like rhyming words and also think it sounds like a lot of fun, which could potentially attract more members.

  We’ve decided to have the first meeting next When?sday after school. I can hardly wait! I’ll let you know how it went in my next letter.

  Your friend,

  Dethbert Jones

  P.S. I’ve just realized that I actually know very little about karate, so could you write and tell me all about it soon please?

  CHAPTER 10

  Dear Earthling,

  Thank you for your letter and Beginners Guide to Karate book. I only managed to read two chapters before the first official Karate Party meeting, which I’m sorry to say was a total disaster.

  Firstly, not as many people turned up as we’d hoped (four including me and Andi).

  Secondly, one of them was Sergeant Megatron 5000, who had found a leaflet outside school and insisted on staying even after we told him it was a youth club. He argued that he was young in robot terms as he’s only thirty-five and robots can live to two hundred plus. Added to that, he’d gone to the effort of making himself a karate suit and said he’d make one for all members, so we reluctantly let him join.

  Thirdly (and worst of all) the only other person who came was none other than Stabwell Phillips! Which means the Karate Party is a waste of time because Stabwell will know as much about it as me and probably still be able to mash me to a pulp if he wants to.

  However, I decided to make the best of a bad situation, so we got into pairs to do some basics.

  This was when things really started to go wrong.

  I turned to partner up with Andi, but Sergeant Megatron 5000 suggested that the two robots should pair up instead, as it would be more of an equal match. Thing is, he was right, so I couldn’t really argue without making myself look stupid.

  I was about to shout out instructions, but before I had a chance to say much, Stabwell “accidentally” punched me in the stomach with his bionic hand. That’s when I fell backwards and knocked myself out on the corner of Andi’s mum’s tool bench (she’s a truck mechanic).

  The next thing I remember is waking up in the arms of Sergeant Megatron 5000 as he whizzed me home. Apparently Stabwell had panicked and run off crying after I collapsed. This could have been because Andi initially thought I was dead and had freaked out and yelled “YOU’VE KILLED HIM” in loudspeaker mode right in Stabwell’s face.

  Things happen for a reason though, and as Andi had the foresight to video the aftermath (including Stabwell crying) in case it was needed as evidence at my murder trial, hopefully Stabwell will stop bugging me. Either that or face the whole of our class seeing him blubbering like a two year old.

  Anyway, Karate Party has been disbanded, mainly because I’d originally told my parents I was starting a macramé club (which involves knitting pot holders out of string) and obviously you don’t generally get punched and knocked out while taking part in craft activities, so I had to come clean.

  As a punishment for lying, I’ve been ordered to play with my little sister at least one hour a day for two weeks. I pleaded for mercy and offered to do all of the housework for a month, but Mum was insistent—she’s got it in her head that Shriekfest and I aren’t close enough and need more bonding. I don’t know how it is on Earth, but I always thought siblings were meant to avoid each other’s company at all costs?

  Wish me luck, and write soon.

  Your friend,

  Dethbert Jones

  CHAPTER 11

  Dear Earthling,

  I enjoyed reading your last letter—it made me feel much better knowing that you also avoid spending time with your sister. I’m also glad that Shriekfest is my younger sister—I don’t know if I could cope with the activities you describe, such as the time your sister secretly parpled into an empty jar, then asked you to take a sniff and tell her if you thought it used to contain jam. Disgusterous!

  As it happens, the time I’ve spent with her in the last week was almost worthwhile because on the third day of enforced bonding (after I’d plodded round the lounge on all fours for the umpteenth time with Shriekfest on my back whipping me with a belt), Mum took pity on me and
actually allowed me to take my sister outside in the hope that she’d run off some excess energy. Mum never usually trusts me to take Shriekfest out of the house—ever since that time when I took her into the front garden to play when she was a baby.

  I don’t know what Mum was worried about, as anyone not profoundly deaf would have hurried back with Shriekfest for a full refund the second she started wailing.

  So, as Mum has conveniently forgotten all about that episode (either that or she now thinks selling her wasn’t such a bad idea), I took her to the local park to feed the fluppies. Do you have fluppies on Earth? They are tiny goat-like creatures that eat almost anything. But as they like to roam around in packs of forty or more, they aren’t suitable to keep as pets.

  Anyway, while Shriekfest was chasing the fluppies round (I was sat on a bench nearby shouting occasional words of wisdom, such as “No Shriekfest, don’t throw the fluppie,”), who should come charging out of some bushes and hurtling towards the fluppies, but Killian!

  Shriekfest was preparing to test her theory that fluppies could fly, when Killan snatched the unsuspecting fluppie from her grasp. Killan then proceeded to shout angrily at Shriekfest about treating wild creatures with respect.

  Well, I was shocked to say the least and did the only thing a self-respecting big brother could do in such circumstances—I joined Killian in having a go at Shriekfest.