by Jack Cheng
DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
Penguin Young Readers Group An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Jack Cheng
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Ebook ISBN 9780399186394
Design by Jason Henry
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Author photo © Wesley Verhoeve
Jacket art © 2017 by Heads of State
Version_1
To Mom, Dad, and Charlie
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
New Recording 1: 6M 19S
New Recording 2: 6M 41S
New Recording 3: 6M 16S
New Recording 4: [Recording Not Available]
New Recording 5: 8M 52S
New Recording 6: 7M 36S
New Recording 7: 6M 3S
New Recording 8: 5M 27S
New Recording 9: 7M 4S
New Recording 10: 9M 46S
New Recording 11: 6M 23S
New Recording 12: 5M 17S
New Recording 13: 5M 28S
New Recording 14: 7M 47S
New Recording 15: 7M 58S
New Recording 16: 7M 16S
New Recording 17: 3H 7M 15S
New Recording 18: 11M 15S
New Recording 19: 3M 53S
New Recording 20: 6M 52S
New Recording 21: 6M 18S
New Recording 22: 2M 43S
New Recording 23: 7M 4S
New Recording 24: 11M 38S
New Recording 25: 11M 28S
New Recording 26: 18M 34S
New Recording 27: 11M 52S
New Recording 28: 12M 34S
New Recording 29: 6M 24S
New Recording 30: 10M 35S
New Recording 31: 12M 49S
New Recording 32: 3M 29S
New Recording 33: 2M 21S
New Recording 34: 14M 50S
New Recording 35: 6M 51S
New Recording 36: 2H 4M 14S
New Recording 37: 3M 15S
New Recording 38: 3M 26S
New Recording 39: 4M 10S
New Recording 40: 10M 48S
New Recording 41: 5M 26S
New Recording 42: 8M 19S
New Recording 43: 8M 46S
New Recording 44: 39S
New Recording 45: 2M 18S
New Recording 46: 29M 18S
New Recording 47: 4M 32S
New Recording 48: 5M 37S
New Recording 49: 15M 9S
New Recording 50: 3M 7S
New Recording 51: 2M 43S
New Recording 52: 6M 9S
Acknowledgments
NEW RECORDING 1
6M 19S
Who are you?
What do you look like?
Do you have one head or two?
More?
Do you have light brown skin like I do or smooth gray skin like a dolphin or spiky green skin like a cactus?
Do you live in a house?
I live in a house. My name is Alex Petroski and my house is in Rockview, Colorado, United States of America, planet Earth. I am eleven years and eight months old and the United States is two hundred forty-two years old and Earth is 4.5 billion years old. I’m not sure how old my house is.
Maybe you live on an ice planet, so instead of houses you have igloos and your hands are icepicks and your feet are snowshoes and you’re covered in gold-brown fur like Carl Sagan. That’s my dog. I named him after my hero, Dr. Carl Sagan, who was one of the greatest astronomers of our time. Dr. Sagan helped send Voyagers 1 and 2 into deep space and put a Golden Record on them with all kinds of sounds from our planet, like whales singing and people saying hello in fifty-five languages, and the laugh of a newborn baby and the brainwaves of a woman in love and mankind’s greatest music like Bach and Beethoven and Chuck Berry. Maybe you’ve heard it?
I found my pup Carl Sagan in the parking lot at Safeway, and when I saw him he was dirty and hungry and hiding behind a dumpster. I said, Come here boy, don’t be scared, but he was crying and curling his tail because we were still strangers at that point. I told him I’m not going to hurt him, I’m a pacifist, and I guess he believed me because when I picked him up he didn’t even fight me or try to run. Then I took him back to my house and my mom was lying on the sofa watching her shows like she usually does, and I told her I got the groceries but I got a pup also and I’ll take good care of him I promise, I’ll play with him and feed him and give him a bath and all the stuff you’re supposed to say.
And she said, You’re in the way! So I got out of the way. My best friend Benji’s mom would freak if he brought home a pup, but my mom, she doesn’t care as long as I make us dinner and don’t bother her when she’s watching her shows. She’s a pretty cool mom.
I don’t know what kind of shows you guys have but the ones my mom likes are game shows and judge shows and shows with five ladies sitting in a fake living room. When I’m at Benji’s house we watch Cartoon Network because his family has On Demand, and Benji loves Battlemorph Academy and so do a lot of the kids at school. I think that show’s OK but I prefer the more classic cartoons like Dexter’s Laboratory to be honest. That Dexter is one smart kid. I hate it when his sister Didi goes in and messes up everything. I’m glad I don’t have a sister to mess up my stuff, especially when I’m working on my rocket.
I do have an older brother though. His name is Ronnie but everyone calls him RJ except my mom and me and some of his old high school friends because his middle name is James. Ronnie’s a lot older, he’s more than twice how old I am. He’s twenty-four. He lives in Los Angeles and his job is an agent, and I know what you’re thinking but he’s not that kind of agent. He’s not a spy or Bond, James Bond kind of agent. He doesn’t fight terrorists or bust drug dealers or play poker with super-villains. He helps basketball and football players get shoe commercials. But he does go to fancy parties and wear sunglasses, so I guess it’s kind of the same.
Ronnie wouldn’t let me keep Carl Sagan at first. He never likes it when my mom and me spend his money on stuff that isn’t groceries or bills for our house. When I told him about Carl Sagan over the phone he said, Uh-uh, we can’t afford a dog. I said I think we CAN afford a dog because I’ve been getting the on-sale food from Safeway and making my own sandwiches for school instead of buying hot lunch, and also I got a part-time job helping Mr. Bashir stack magazines at his gas station. I said, I’ve been saving the money for my rocket but I can use some of it to buy Carl Sagan’s food because he’s not that big of a dog, and besides, you should come back to Rockview sometime and meet him in person—I mean, in dog—before you make any brash decisions.
That was almost a year ago and Ronnie still hasn’t met Carl Sagan in dog yet. But I’m sure when they finally do meet that Ronnie’s going to love him because who can turn down t
hat face?
Huh? Who can turn down that face?
That’s right, I’m talking about you, Carl Sagan. Do you want to say hello?
Come on boy, say hello.
Carl Sagan doesn’t want to say hello. He’s just staring at me like, What are you doing? Who are you talking to? Is there a person in there? I don’t see a person in there.
There’s no person in here boy, it’s just an iPod. You watched me spray-paint it gold, remember? I’m making recordings so when intelligent beings millions of light-years away find it one day they’ll know what Earth was like, do you understand?
He doesn’t understand. Now he’s looking out the window. He’s easily distracted.
So then I . . . um . . . What was I talking about?
Anyway, I thought that maybe you guys already got my hero’s Golden Record but maybe you don’t have record players where you are, or you used to but not anymore. The only ones I’ve ever seen are the used ones at Goodwill and nobody buys them because iPods and iPhones fit in your pocket better. Also, this iPod can hold a lot more than a record. I already uploaded everything from the Golden Record onto here and there was so much room left, and then I found out you can make recordings too, so I thought maybe I could record some sounds from Earth that you haven’t already heard. Plus I’ll explain everything that’s happening behind the scenes while I get ready for my launch. It’ll be like Blu-ray bonus features!
There’s SO much I want to tell you guys. But it’ll have to wait because Carl Sagan’s sitting by the door because he wants to go pee and poop. And I still have to pack everything for my trip! I’ll tell you about SHARF and my rocket next time.
NEW RECORDING 2
6M 41S
Hi again, guys! I promised I’d tell you more about SHARF and I’m a man of my word. SHARF is a rocket festival that’s happening in the desert near Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’m launching my rocket there in three days!
The official name is the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival but everyone on Rocketforum.org just calls it SHARF. It’s an acronym. Acronyms are words made using the first letter of other words, like how NASA is National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In fourth grade we made acronyms from our own names and I used my full first name even though Mrs. Thompson said I could just use Alex. I wanted to challenge myself. The acronym for my name was:
Astronomer
Launches rockets
Earthling
Xplorer
Afraid of spiders
Nice person
Dedicated
Enthusiastic
Rocket enthusiast
I made one for my hero too. It was:
Cosmic
All-time hero
Really smart
Likes science
Everyone on Rocketforum is really REALLY excited about SHARF. There’s a post at the top that says OFFICIAL SHARF THREAD and it has SO many replies already. Frances19 said she’s dyeing her hair a special color for SHARF and Ganymede and Europa were talking about how much fun last year’s was, and Calexico posted a bunch of cool tips about camping, like if you leave your shoes outside your tent at night make sure you turn them upside down in the morning because there might be scorpions. He said they show up in pairs too, so if you find one scorpion you’ll usually find another. They’re very romantic creatures.
I already packed my rocket and toothbrush and Ronnie’s old tent, and a 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner because it’ll save me some room. I packed Carl Sagan’s special kibble also—they’re going to have barbecue food at SHARF but Carl Sagan can’t eat it because he has a sensitive digestive system.
I still have more to pack but I needed a break, so I came up to the roof of my house. I love lying down on the hood of a car like Dr. Arroway in the movie Contact but my mom doesn’t drive anymore, so I just come up on our ladder to the roof. I usually come up here at night so that way I’m closer to the stars, even though it’s only one story closer.
I like coming up here during the day too though. Our subdivision is on a hill, and when I’m up here I can see really far. I can see the train tracks and Burger King and I can see Mr. Bashir’s gas station which has a flagpole outside with the biggest American flag in Rockview, it’s SO huge. Way in the distance I can see Mount Sam and the big white letter R for Rockview on the side near the bottom. One time before Ronnie’s homecoming game against our town’s rivals, Belmar, some kids from Belmar High came in the middle of the night and changed the R to a B, and the next day Ronnie was so mad that he ran for five touchdowns and our team kicked their team’s butts. I guess their plan backfired.
Sometimes after my mom has one of her quiet days she’ll need fresh air so she’ll go for a walk, and when I’m up here I can see where she walks. Like right now she’s walking toward Justin Mendoza’s house, which is down our street toward the bottom of the hill, and when she gets to Justin’s house she’ll either turn left toward Mill Road or turn right toward Benji’s subdivision. I can’t see that as good because it’s surrounded by trees.
Justin’s the one who gave me this iPod, actually! He was a grade lower than Ronnie in high school and he used to come over and play with Ronnie all the time, but he didn’t move away after college like Ronnie did. I went over there yesterday to buy the iPod from him for twenty dollars like we agreed, but then he said I could just have it for free because the battery sucks. He went inside his house to get it and I waited in his garage, and I was looking at the Honda motorcycle he’s always working on and I squeezed one of the handles, but when I did a screw fell out, so I put it on a blue rag with a bunch of other parts.
Justin came back with the iPod and charger and I said, Hey Justin, your job is a mechanic, shouldn’t you be done working on your motorcycle already? He said his problem is he’ll think he’s done but then he’ll ride around on it for a while and think of something better to do, so he’ll take it apart and start over again. I told him he should just download a simulator for his motorcycle like the one I found for my rocket called OpenRocket. It lets me put in different motors and change the nose cone and fins and everything, and it tells me exactly how high the rocket’s going to go so that way I don’t even have to buy any parts until I’m ready to launch. I told him that’s how I designed Voyager 3, my rocket that’s going to carry his iPod into space.
Justin said, So it’s going to be your first launch ever? And I said that’s right, and he said, Shouldn’t you do some test launches? And I said, That’s the whole point of the simulator, it’s so I don’t have to, DUH!
Justin laughed and he asked me how’s Ronnie doing, and I told him Ronnie’s busy like usual with his prospective clients. A prospective client is someone who Ronnie wants to want Ronnie to be their agent, so he takes them out to lunch and he pays for their lunch. Justin said he really looks up to Ronnie, he’s always thought of him like an older brother, and I said that’s funny because I’ve always thought of him like an older brother too, and Justin laughed again. He told me to let him know how my launch goes and I said I will, and I told him he might want to check the handle on his motorcycle to make sure there aren’t any parts missing.
NEW RECORDING 3
6M 16S
What do you guys do when you can’t fall asleep?
Maybe you don’t need sleep at all, maybe you’re just awake all the time because your planet spins so slowly that you’re always facing the sun. It’s always day.
Or maybe you guys do the opposite, you pretty much sleep whenever you’re not eating, like koalas or Carl Sagan. He just curls into a doughnut on the bed or sofa or my lap and he starts falling asleep, easy.
Are you sleeping right now?
I guess not, because how would you be listening to this if you were sleeping?
I guess that means we’re both awake . . .
I finished packing last night. And today I spent the whole day making food f
or my mom for when I’m gone. My mom knows how to cook and she’s a great cook, but I’ve been making food for us so much this year that I’d feel bad if I didn’t do something.
Plus she was having another one of her quiet days where she stays in bed and stares at all the little bumps on the ceiling. I think she likes counting them. And I brought water to her room and I told her, I made you food for the next three days when I’m at SHARF, all you have to do is take out the GladWare from the refrigerator and heat it up in the microwave and I love you.
I thought I’d be really tired after making all that food but I wasn’t. I tried listening to Beethoven and Chuck Berry and watching my Blu-ray of Contact, but they only made me more awake. I tried sleeping in Ronnie’s bed too. I keep everything on his side of our room exactly how it was when he moved out, so that way when he comes home to visit he’ll see all his sexy lady posters on the wall and his sports trophies on the shelf and he’ll feel like he never left. Sometimes I sleep in his bed though, because maybe if you sleep where another person sleeps and do what that person does, then eventually you’ll start turning into that person. You’ll think like they think and remember what they remember, and after a while you’ll have big muscles and make a lot of money to buy groceries for your mom.
My Amtrak train to Albuquerque, New Mexico, leaves pretty early tomorrow. Calexico and some other Rocketforum members are meeting at Blake’s Lottaburger which is a restaurant near the train station in Albuquerque, and they’re going to carpool to the SHARF site and I’m going to get a ride. I hope I can figure out who’s who because for most people I only know their usernames and not what they look like.
Also, I only have two days until my launch, so I’ll have to find some real important sounds from Earth for you guys really fast. Maybe . . . maybe since you can already hear the heartbeats and brainwaves of a woman in love on the Golden Record, I can record the sounds of a MAN in love on this Golden iPod!
I would record myself but I’m not in love with anyone yet. I don’t love any of the girls at school because they’re mostly just excited about buying clothes and Snapchatting and Skyler Beltran. We have different interests. I’m not worried though, I bet I’ll meet someone at SHARF who’s in love because I know a lot of guys like that. Ronnie’s in love with his girlfriend Lauren, for example, and Benji’s in love with Ms. Shannon, who teaches advanced math. He said she leaned over to help him with a math problem once and she smelled like peach Jolly Ranchers. He made me promise not to tell a soul on Earth, so I think it’s OK if I tell you guys.