Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth

by Ned Rust

  “Public operations? More like proletariat oversight panel. And it also comprises undersight, around-the-corner-sight, through-the-wall-sight, secret-camera-in-your-restroom-sight—”

  “There are no secret cameras in lavatories!” yelled Kempton. “Every POP camera on Ith is plainly visible and identifiable via the Camera Locator App!”

  “Oh yeah?” asked Skwurl, pointing at the message on the mirror.

  “What!?” demanded Kempton.

  “One-way mirror,” said Skwurl. “With a camera behind it.”

  “That’s a lie!” yelled Kempton. “They don’t put cameras in a locker room. That would be an Invasion of Privacy.”

  “Yeah, privacy’s a huge concern of the Peepers’,” sneered the girl.

  “There are no—” Kempton started to say but then a wild look came across his face and he ran—arms outstretched—straight at Skwurl.

  “Kempton!” shouted Patrick.

  Skwurl sidestepped the charging boy, leaving him to crash with a Whang! into the stainless steel stall partition.

  “Take it easy, Kempton,” said Patrick as the red-faced boy regained his balance.

  “I’m undertaking a citizen’s arrest,” roared Kempton. “Help me apprehend her, Patrick Griffin!”

  The girl gave Patrick an amused eye roll and offered him her upturned wrists. It was a gesture, Patrick suspected, a real terrorist would never have risked.

  “In the name of the Seer—” said Kempton, rushing the girl once more.

  “Kempton!” shouted Patrick, now more than a little embarrassed by his host.

  Skwurl ducked and swung out her left leg, knocking the charging boy’s feet from under him. Then she pounced upon his fallen body and hog-tied his wrists and ankles with some black tape.

  “Help me, help me!” screamed Kempton.

  “Don’t be a baby,” said the girl, brandishing the roll of tape. “And stop interrupting or I’ll seal your mouth shut and give you a wedgie!”

  Kempton gave her a slow nod, genuine fear glinting in his oversized eyes.

  “Well, I’m glad for at least that much consideration,” said the girl. “Even if it’s only yielded under duress.

  “And now,” she continued, “I suppose we have just a moment to get to the bottom of our previous disagreement about cameras.”

  Reaching over her shoulder, she produced a ten-inch baton. With a quick wrist-snap, she extended it into a vicious fifteen-foot-long metal whip that she flicked against the mirror. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces to reveal a cramped cavity containing a turret-mounted, fat-lensed camera.

  “It’s a plant!” shouted Kempton. “You must have put it there! This is a private area—there’s no way the Deacons would have allowed a camera in here!”

  “You think not?” said the girl. “And what did we just say about interrupting?”

  Kempton clamped his mouth shut.

  “Listen,” she said to Patrick. “I’ve got to go, but I’m supposed to give you a message, and that message is this: ‘The Minder is slipping, and the worlds are falling into a Tyranny of the Senses.’”

  “Worlds?” asked Patrick. He’d been following her up to now but that last bit hadn’t made much sense—had almost sounded religious or something.

  “Yes, the three worlds,” said the girl.

  “You mean, like Earth, Ith, and…”

  “And Mindth,” said Skwurl.

  “Mindth,” said Patrick. “So, let me guess—people have big ears like me on Earth, they have big eyes like you on Ith, and they have big giant brains on Mindth.”

  Skwurl laughed.

  “No, Mindth is a place unlike the two Sense Worlds. Eyes are for Ith, Ears are for Earth, and Dreams are for Mindth. The people there—Mindthlings—come in all shapes and sizes. You’ll meet some of them soon.”

  “Here on Ith,” said Patrick.

  “Yes,” said Skwurl. “The Deacons call them abominations. Like in the video games. Or in the hunts you hear about on news programs. But they’re not monsters. They’re beings like us, only not human ones, obviously.”

  “You mean, so—”

  “No time,” she said, putting her hand to her lips. “Somebody will explain more to you later.”

  She cleared her throat and continued her prepared statement. “‘You, Patrick of Earth,’” she continued, “‘are here to help restore balance. It is too late to have prevented Ith’s great decimation, but there’s still a chance for Earth. It’s not too late for sanity.’”

  “I don’t understand—you want me to do something?” said Patrick.

  “Don’t listen to her!” shrieked Kempton, finding his voice. “She’s full of lies! She wants anarchy! Chaos! Evil!” He kicked his bound legs at the broken glass. “Do you need more proof—look what she’s just done to official property!”

  “Will you please shut up? Please?” said Skwurl.

  “Never! You disgust me and I want you arrested immediately! HE-EEELP!!! HE—”

  The girl tore off a rectangle of tape and placed it over Kempton’s mouth. He writhed and rolled his eyes like a terrified animal.

  “For now, it is merely hoped that you will keep your mind open, Patrick Griffin, and not fall in with the hypocritical manners of this world.”

  “You mean, like, wearing makeup?” asked Patrick.

  “Sure.” The girl smiled. “Or also, for instance, why everybody seems to be dismissive about the fact that you have no memory of your world’s Hearer.”

  “That’s what I told them—I don’t know anything about a Hearer,” said Patrick.

  “And they don’t quite listen, do they? Perhaps they implied that you have memory issues resulting from your transubstantiation?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they said,” said Patrick.

  “Interesting, don’t you think? I mean you’re the one who’s from Earth—our first visitor since Rex himself—and yet they’re so quick to discount what you have to say.”

  Patrick had indeed thought some along the same lines already.

  The girl lifted her camouflage sleeve and glanced at an old-fashioned wristwatch. “Now, sorry, just one more thing—”

  She broke off, sucking breath through her teeth.

  Kempton had somehow spun himself around on the floor and kicked her in the shin.

  “Actually, maybe I can make time for two things.” She removed a black marker from her pocket, bent over Kempton, locked his head between her knees, and wrote I brōktenet 10 across his forehead.

  “That’s what you get for kicking somebody smaller than you,” she said as she got up. “Now—before I go—” She gave another deft flick to her metal whip, dislodging the camera’s glass lens with a pok!

  “Check it out,” she said.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Patrick asked, cautiously stepping forward. But she didn’t reply—she was gone.

  “Mmmmf,” said Kempton.

  Patrick pulled the tape off the boy’s mouth and helped undo the bonds on his hands and feet. Without a word, he helped Kempton to his feet and the two of them approached the busted-open camera. A large, vein-streaked, slime-covered orb dangled from a foot-long glistening pink cord. To Patrick’s mind, the thing was either a prop worthy of a grade-A horror movie, or an actual eyeball.

  CHAPTER 26

  Roadside Assistance

  Carly Griffin, Patrick’s ten-year-old sister, looked out the BMW SUV’s tinted window at the flashing lights and spotted her unharmed father and brother even as Mrs. Fettridge asked, “Is that your father’s truck, Carly?!”

  Carly—busy wishing she was someplace very far away—didn’t answer at first. In addition to being the most popular, Polly Fettridge was the prettiest and possibly the wealthiest girl in the fifth grade, and had a mean streak that made even Carly’s older sister Eva seem like an amateur.

  Mrs. Fettridge drove Polly and Carly home from their travel soccer clinic every Saturday. Carly had long since learned that the safest course was to only spe
ak when spoken to and, even then, to do so only with the very shortest statements possible.

  “What?” said Carly, intentionally looking out the wrong window. “Where?”

  Polly peered at Carly, her nearly lipless mouth perched at the brink of a laugh.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “Let’s stop and see if we can help.”

  “Uh, I—” began Carly, but cut herself off. There was nothing she could say that would make this any better. And a lot of things she could say that would make it worse.

  “Your dad had an accident?!” said Polly. “And, look, your brother’s there, too.”

  “I hope everybody’s okay,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “My goodness, will you look at that car they’re towing!”

  The Prius that had rear-ended her father’s pickup truck was entirely missing its windshield, and both its hood and grille were pushed back- and downward as if a giant had rolled his foot upon it.

  “Your dad’s, umm, truck doesn’t look too bad, though,” said Mrs. Fettridge, touching her hair with one hand and glancing in her visor mirror as she pulled to the curb and put the BMW in park. Mrs. Fettridge, like her daughter, was quite pretty, and amply pleased with the condition. “Well, and aren’t we all lucky it’s stopped raining?” she said, scooping up her iPhone and checking her side mirror as she exited the SUV.

  Carly trailed out of the vehicle after Polly.

  Neil was over by the curb berating himself for having done the honest thing and—on finding it under the passenger seat—given his dad’s phone back to him. If he’d only thought things through and pretended to keep looking for it, he could right now be looking up information about the squid and also whatever that weird new insult was that his father had used. Entack?

  “Rick! Is everybody all right?”

  “Oh, hi, Andrea,” said Mr. Griffin, spotting Mrs. Fettridge as he finished up a conversation with the police officer. “Yes, Neil and I are both fine. And the other driver, too. They took him to the emergency room to be safe—just cuts and bruises, though.”

  “Oh that’s so wonderful,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “Ambulance is never good, though. People are so litigious these days.”

  “Well, he rear-ended me,” said Mr. Griffin. He’d thoroughly reassured himself on this score. “So, there won’t be any judgments going his way. Anyhow, he seemed like a nice man. Just a bit of a tailgater, obviously.”

  “Well, what happened?” said Mrs. Fettridge.

  “Somebody’s dog got out of their yard and ran out in the road,” said Mr. Griffin. “I hit the brakes, and then…”

  “That’s terrible,” said Mrs. Fettridge, her hand fluttering to her chest. “And you didn’t hit the dog?”

  “No, it ran off.”

  “What kind was it?” asked Mrs. Fettridge.

  “The dog?” asked Mr. Griffin.

  “A big one,” said Neil.

  “Yeah, it must have been a Saint Bernard or something,” said Mr. Griffin.

  “Though it was gray,” said Neil. “Which means it wasn’t a Saint Bernard. That’s for sure.” He stifled an impulse to also note that Saint Bernards don’t have antlers and carry crosses.

  “Maybe it was a great Dane,” suggested Mrs. Fettridge.

  “Heya, Superstar!” said Mr. Griffin to the slowly approaching Carly. “How was soccer?”

  “Fine,” said Carly, trying to guess just how many minutes into school tomorrow Polly would be calling her “Superstar!” in front of all her friends.

  “Well,” continued her father, “the Fettridges have gotten you this far. You want to ride home with me the rest of the way?”

  Carly gave her dad a shrug and gazed off at the horizon, still wishing she was someplace far beyond it.

  “She was embarrassed about your truck even when it had a back bumper, Dad,” said Neil.

  “What?” he said, in mock shock, placing his hand over his heart.

  “I like your truck, Rick,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “It’s very you.”

  “Uh, thanks, Andrea,” said Mr. Griffin, looking over at her gleaming oversized luxury SUV and deciding it was best not to return a similarly veiled statement.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Fettridge. “Are you sure it’s okay to drive—I mean, I guess it looks all right, all things considered—”

  “Yeah, it’s just going to need a new bumper and to have its airbags reset.”

  “What a day you Griffins are having,” said Mrs. Fettridge.

  “What?” said Mr. Griffin.

  “I read on Facebook that Patrick’s gone missing. Have you found him yet?”

  “What?” said Carly. “Patrick?” She felt a sinking feeling suddenly. She’d been thinking about Patrick in the car just a little while ago, remembering his birthday was on Thursday. She and Mom were going to make him a pineapple upside-down cake, his favorite.

  “You read that on Facebook?” asked Mr. Griffin.

  “Yes, Laura Tondorf-Schnittman is watching the twins, and Jenna Michaels said that Lucie’s home and that your mother was picking up Eva from swim practice so—”

  “Wow,” said Mr. Griffin. “The Internet now knows more about my family than I do.”

  Mrs. Fettridge decided she’d detected a note of judgment and grimaced. “Well,” she said, “let us know if there’s anything we can do to help. I know it must be a scary time.”

  “I’m not too worried,” said Mr. Griffin. “Patrick’s a twelve-year-old boy and twelve-year-old boys sometimes go off and do things on their own. Or, at least, they used to.”

  Mrs. Fettridge raised a neatly plucked eyebrow and didn’t say anything back.

  “You know, it’s this old-fashioned thing called independence that used to happen before everybody got personal tracking devices and began posting their status updates to major media companies every ten minutes.”

  “Ah, of course,” said Mrs. Fettridge, grabbing her daughter’s hand and turning to Carly. “You looked great at soccer today, Carly. You should come over and play with Polly sometime. We have a great big yard and she never goes out and practices on her own.”

  Polly gave Carly a withering look as her mother steered her back to their car.

  Carly looked to her father. “Is Patrick all right, Dad?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” he replied as he watched the high-heeled Mrs. Fettridge slide back into her luxury automobile. “He just went off someplace without telling anybody is all.”

  “Oh,” said Carly, not entirely reassured.

  Mr. Griffin ignored his cell phone as it buzzed. Whatever it was, it could surely wait till he got home in two minutes.

  How could he have guessed it was his wife calling to say their children Paul and Cassie—the Twins—had also gone missing?

  CHAPTER 27

  What Meets the Eye

  After allowing Kempton and Patrick to scrub the ink off the former’s forehead, Gymnasiarch Frayne and two black-mustached men in dark blue uniforms led them from the locker room, down two hallways, and up an escalator to the plush reception area outside Provost Bostrel’s private office.

  Patrick had never seen such a fancy setup in his whole life, much less in a school. From the silk-cushioned bench with its lion’s claw feet and fluted armrests to the large and expensive-looking landscape paintings and portraits on the walls to the crystal chandelier, it was the sort of waiting room he would have expected to see maybe for the president of a very old bank.

  To Patrick’s eye, the only less-than-classy aspect of the room was the scrolling text upon the digitally enabled wallpaper. Textured messages circled, wobbled, and swayed around the room: if ü SE sumðing, inform! anarkE = EvƏL! vijƏLƏns Əbuv oL!

  “What the heck is that?” asked Patrick, for the first time noticing the gleaming, gold-leafed Egyptian-style pyramid set in the obsidian-walled tub in the middle of the floor.

  “An award fountain,” said Kempton. “Want to see it run?”

  “Uh, sure,” said Patrick.

  “Fountain on!”
Kempton commanded. There was a humming noise as the capstone lifted into the air on a jet of water. Jade-green eyes—one on each of its four sides—opened and seemed to track the two boys as the piece slowly rotated.

  “What the heck is it for?” said Patrick, fascinated.

  “It’s our YSS award for best test scores in the prefecture.”

  “YSS?”

  “Unified Society of Science,” said Kempton. “Don’t tell me you don’t have YSS on Earth?”

  “Well,” said Patrick testily, “at least we don’t have spy-cams in our locker rooms.”

  “We don’t have spy-cams in our locker rooms,” sputtered Kempton, “or in any private areas! In fact, we aren’t even allowed to use our binkies in such places!”

  “Well, la-di-da,” muttered Patrick; it was one of Eva’s favorite retorts.

  Kempton gave him a hateful look and crossed his arms.

  Patrick closed his eyes, leaned his head against the wall, and concentrated on the throbbing in his bruised nose. A door creaked and he opened an eye to see Kempton leaping to his feet for another impassioned salute.

  “Please come on in and sit,” said Provost Bostrel with all the exuberance of a telephone menu. Patrick followed Kempton into an office appointed in mahogany, velvet, and brass, illuminated by a single massive floor-to-ceiling window that looked out upon a vast field of amber grain in which, maybe a hundred yards distant, a green flag—the spider-and-stop-sign logo he’d seen on people’s uniforms—fluttered atop a slender white pole.

  From what Patrick had seen so far of the school and its surroundings—the trees, hills, winding streets, bleachers, and ball fields—this flat, sunny sea of wheat seemed out of place. He had an impulse to ask about it but stopped himself. It was his dream, after all, and, if things didn’t make sense, there was nobody to blame but himself.

  Following Kempton’s lead, he sat in one of the wingback chairs across from the provost’s stately, richly grained desk.

  “Care to try my nuts?” asked the man, pushing an inRi-logoed snack bowl across the desk.

  “Oooh!” said Kempton. “They’re at the height of ripeness!”

  Patrick’s stomach did a little flip-flop. He’d never much cared for nuts but there was something especially creepy about these ones. They were big as Brazils but paler, and fleshy-looking. He shook his head.