by Steve Cole
OTHER STORIES BY STEVE COLE:
Magic Ink
Astrosaurs
Cows-In-Action
Z-REX
Slime Squad
Tripwire
WHAT HUMANS SAY ABOUT MAGIC INK:
“I love that I can take my kids to meet their favourite authors and make books come so alive.
Steve Cole a joy today. Thanks @edbookfest” Sarah Brown, wife of ex-PM Gordon
“A cracking read for boys.”
The Sun
“In a fantastically improbable but sustained plot Stew has to rescue the wizard Merlin from imprisonment, by drawing with magic ink on magic paper. This joke-filled story with zany illustrations is underpinned by a serious theme: ‘Success only comes with belief . . . heroes come from within.’”
The Sunday Times
“The humour is perfectly suited to a young boy . . . good books for boys are harder to find, and this one is truly exceptional.”
The Bookbag
“Unusual and entertaining, this is an excellent read.”
Parents in Touch
CONTENTS
ZERO
PART ONE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
PART TWO
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
PART THREE
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
I sat frozen on the bed. Staring.
Three dark eyes stared back
and winked at me in sequence.
There was a living creature in my holdall.
It was like nothing on Earth.
It was ALIEN.
ALIEN, I TELL YOU!
But to be honest, I’m getting ahead of myself. We
shouldn’t really meet the ALIEN until this page.
DON’T FLICK THERE NOW TO SEE!
(Or if you must, be quick, OK?)
I need to tell
you how the whole thing came to happen.
And YOU
need to turn the page.
MY DAD,
FIST-FACE
and the early stages
of the cosmic crisis
soon to endanger
our world
(and me)
Let me paint you a little picture of my dad and me. Or, draw you one, anyway.
“How hard can it be?” you’re thinking. “So your dad cycles around the place, hugs a few trees, goes on protest marches . . .”
YOU’RE THINKING WRONG.
I can see I need to give you examples.
Actually, it really is made out of rubbish, wrapped up in some weird eco-concrete stuff. Dad designed the place himself, so it makes its own electricity and even recycles our water. It took him years to build it on some wasteland he bought cheap, next to an old windmill. He started when I was nine years old, and finally finished building it when I was twelve. During that time, we rented a normal house like normal people.
Those were good years.
New Scientist magazine called Dad’s dream-come-true, “The world’s ultimate green home”.
The local paper called it, “FLOWER-POWER EYESORE HATED BY BAFFLED NEIGHBOURS”.
And Darren “Fist-Face” Gilbert in the year above called it, “The stinking, mouldy freak-dump where gimpy Gooseheart sits on his own crying all night cos everyone hates him, then uses the tears to wash his bum because he’s too poor to use normal water.” Which, you know, wasn’t so good.
And not even true. I’ve definitely never EVER washed my bum with tears. Tears are salty for a start. Who wants a salty bum?
I know why Fist-Face said stuff like that though. Kids always pick on anyone who’s different, don’t they? I’ve tried telling this to Dad, tried telling him I want to be normal. But he’s been daring to be different his whole life and wants me to be that way too. “Don’t be afraid to stand out, Tim!”
Easy for Dad to say – well, unless he’s saying it through a mouthful of organic tomatoes, which he probably is. Because, worst of all, Dad grows organic veg in our garden and that is ALL WE EAT!
Mmmmm.
I could go on – about Dad’s jumble sale shopping sprees, about Dad’s protest marches outside fast-food stores (where me and him are the only two who’ve shown up, and me only because he’ll ground me if I don’t), about how we can’t have a car because that would make us evil polluters and so on and so on and so, SO on.
But you see how it is. Dad might be trying to save the planet, but NOBODY can save my rep!
I hope you can understand how, some nights, I would lie awake thinking,
“PLEASE, WON’T SOMEONE MAKE THIS TORTURE END?”
So maybe it’s all my fault. Because, as it turned out, fact fans . . . Yes. Someone would make this torture end.
But not in a good way.
Dad works at the Space Centre. The Space Centre is not, in fact, the centre of space, but a place in the city where clever people do research into Crazy Out-There Physics stuff, and Amazing Things To Do With The Structure Of Space And The Universe.
Don’t ask me what Amazing Things Dad did there – it was all a big secret.
Was he . . .
□ Doing weird experiments on alien brains?
□ Sending unwitting test subjects into space?
□ Bunking off to Mars with his mates?
I wish I did know what Dad was getting up to. I was born around the time he started there, and every time I’ve asked, he’s never once told me.
“You wouldn’t understand, Tim,” he says. “And if you did understand, I’d have to fire you into the centre of a black hole because it’s super top secret and no one is allowed to know.” And then he normally does his crazy-sounding laugh.
I still want to know, but other than Dad, there’s not really been anyone else to ask.
“What about your mum?” you say.
Well, I don’t have a mum. Thanks for bringing that up! No, really – THANKS. I appreciate it.
Nah, it’s OK. Don’t feel bad. Much.
I’m over the whole thing, really. I’ve had to be. Dad won’t talk about it.
He looks shifty and says I was brought to this world by aliens and left on his doorstep.
I THINK he’s joking, but who knows? Certainly not the other forms of life who’ve shared my home – like Nanny Helen (that’s “nanny” as in “childminder”, not as in “grandma” or “goat”) and Herbert, my pet goldfish. Neither of them knows a thing. (Or if Herbert does, he’s playing it cool.)
It makes me think sometimes, when things feel hard here and I look up at the night sky . . . could it be that I belong out there?
Life has got to be easier out there in space.
Right?
So when does this story really start? Well, right now, with the Beginning.
&
nbsp; And the Beginning began with the Big Heal.
You remember? That’s what they called it – the Big Heal. Also known as the Green Miracle, or the Night the World Got Better.
You can see why.
There’s the Earth as normal, in its usual not-great state – holes in the ozone layer letting through dangerous radiation . . . greenhouse gases poisoning the atmosphere . . . global warming melting the polar ice caps . . . all of that.
Suddenly, most of the damage was pretty much reversed overnight. The ozone layer was back – thicker than ever. No pesky holes in it any more. The carbon dioxide levels suddenly fell, as if a hundred years of industrial pollution had been undone overnight. Acid rain became “placid” rain, calm and regular, all the sulphuric stuff squeezed out of it. And somehow, all that melting ice in the Arctic and Antarctic froze up again.
Impossible, yeah? A MIRACLE. No question.
Well, of course, there were questions. And everyone seemed to have different opinions as to what had happened.
We were still in our old, ordinary house back then.
I was woken up by the phone ringing – at five in the morning! The news was blaring from Dad’s radio. It drowned out what Dad was saying on the phone, but he didn’t sound happy.
He hung up and thumped down the stairs. I found him pacing around the kitchen table.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I have to go to work, Tim,” he said. “I’ve called Helen – she’s coming in early to take you to school.”
I shook my head. “I mean, what’s going on with the planet!” The radio was still burbling with reports and facts and experts blabbing on:
“SOMETHING LIKE THIS DEFIES ALL THE NATURAL LAWS . . .”
“IT’S BIG BUSINESSES PULLING A TRICK. MUST BE . . .”
“MIRACLES NEED NO EXPLANATIONS . . .”
Dad stared into the distance.
“If something seems too good to be true, it very often is,” he said.
After the Big Heal, a lot of people thought more green miracles would happen.
Thousands gathered at the South American rainforests, waiting for Mother Nature to do her thing. They expected them to grow back overnight.
It was the same with the sea. People thought the pollution would suddenly vanish. Herbert in particular probably had his fins crossed; not for himself, being a freshwater fish, but for his ocean-dwelling brothers. He’s that kind of fish – warm-hearted. Well, as warmhearted as you can get when you’re cold-blooded.
But anyway – it didn’t happen.
What did happen was weirder. Wafts of strangesmelling air began to be noticed around the world.
It was a gentle, loving pong that sweet-talked your nostrils, married them in a short but moving ceremony and took them on a honeymoon to heaven. I felt sure it was the way that my ideal planet would surely smell, way out in some perfumed patch of outer space – if I could ever reach it. Even Herbert seemed excited about the smell, whizzing about in his bowl like he’d been fitted with fin jets.
“That smells AMAZING!” I burbled to Dad as I came down the stairs. “It’s never breakfast, is it?”
“Your breakfast is cucumbers and celery chutney on toast,” Dad said distantly. “This smell is something else.” He was right. On both counts (unfortunately).
It soon became clear that an identical niff could be smelled all across the planet. Over land, over sea – everywhere. The only difference was that the niff was stronger the higher up you were. People in Holland, Tuvalu and Bangladesh felt a little left out, but up in the mountains of Peru the whiff was enough to charm your conk off.
No one could decide what it actually smelled like, though. The scent was like nothing on Earth.
And of course, the cries of “MIRACLE!” soon went up again. Surely, the Big Pong had to be a part of the Big Heal?
“This unique and joyous smell,” one expert said, “is the smell of Mother Nature’s healing hands.”
Other experts agreed. “It’s a sure sign that whatever has kick-started Earth’s natural defences is still at large.”
Dad did not seem happy about the smell. He got snappier and more distant than usual. Nanny Helen, on the other nostril, was delighted.
“OMG, it’s lush, isn’t it?” she gushed one evening. “We’ll never smell nasty fumes from cars and factories ever again.”
Dad nodded and scowled. “That doesn’t mean they won’t be there.”
“Well, it’s OK, now, isn’t it?” said Helen brightly. “We know the planet can heal itself—”
“It can’t,” Dad snapped. “That can’t happen.”
Helen gave him a funny look. “Er . . . it has, though.”
“Something has happened,” Dad corrected her. “Until we understand exactly what, we should be making less waste, not more.”
“Why’d you have to spoil everything, Dad?” I blurted. “You’re the biggest source of moan pollution on the planet!”
Dad looked at me calmly. “Serious issues have to be taken seriously.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I stomped away upstairs to my room and slammed the door. “Herbert, I’m sorry that fish don’t have a three-second memory,” I said (scientists have proven they remember stuff for up to five months; live with a scientist for a dad, you learn all sorts), “because I am going to have to moan to you about Dad and his super-green gloominess for the millionth time and I expect you’re going to be bored . . .”
Herbert didn’t seem bored. Since the Big Pong had started, he’d perked up a lot, wibbling at high speed about his bowl. But in any case, he was let off grumble duty that night.
I forgot my moaning. I was too busy staring, gobsmacked, at the weird lights whisking about the night sky, high above the traffic, through my open window.
UFO mania!
That’s what they called it.
Unidentified flying objects spotted all around the world, night after night for several weeks. Strange lights in the sky, police switchboards jammed with callers, reported sightings of dark, giant spidery creatures, tales of alien abduction . . . Nutters on TV saying the aliens were coming . . . Experts on TV saying, “Shut up, nutters”. . .
Many explanations for the UFOs were put forward by all sorts of important people. Apparently, they were not alien spacecraft at all, but one of the following (decide for yourself how likely these explanations were by ticking the boxes):
When those were your options, it was hard to know WHAT to think. And I didn’t have anyone to ask. I had vowed never again to talk to my dad for making us move away. I tried talking to Herbert but he was more interested in showing off his new loop-the-loop trick. I had to admit that I had never seen a goldfish loop-the-loop, nor the nifty figure-of-eight he started doing soon after. It was pretty cool, if a bit weird – but there’s only so many hundred times you can watch a stunt like that and feel impressed.
Nanny Helen (Helen, I mean. I know it’s babyish to go on calling her “Nanny” Helen, but that’s what I called her when I was little and it stuck) wasn’t much better when it came to conversation:
Me: “Do you think we’re being visited by aliens from outer space?”
Helen: “I don’t know, Tim . . .”
Me: “They can’t be clouds or jets or anything like that, can they?”
Helen: “OMG, I love clouds. They’re so fluffy.”
Me: “Of course, if it IS aliens and they have amazing spaceships, they probably have really bad weapons that could wipe us all out in ten seconds.”
Helen: “OMG! Stop it! That’s . . . OMG, that’s just . . . OMG . . .”
Me: “Do you think the world will get blown up before I have to move? I’d hate to be wasting all this worry if I—”
Helen: “O!M Oh . . . OMG, I don’t . . . OMG! OMG, I . . . OM-GEEEEEEEEEEEE . . .” etc., etc.
In the end, when Helen went home a flustered wreck, I just had to talk to Dad.
�
��Do you think the UFOs are alien spacecraft?” I asked.
“Sorry, Tim,” he replied, “that’s top secret.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m not asking Doctor Eric Gooseheart, Head of Applied and Theoretical Quantum-Astrophysical Analysis at the Space Centre. I’m asking my dad.”
Dad blinked. Then he shrugged. “I’m not sure what they are,” he said. “They don’t move like any type of flying craft we use. They don’t leave any trace of exhaust gases behind either.” He shook his head. “If they are spacecraft, I wish I knew how they worked. I’ve spent so many years at the Space Centre trying to . . .”
“Yes?” I broke in eagerly. “What have you been trying to do?”
He trailed off, distant again. “Never mind.”
“Yes! Mind!” I cried. “Dad, you never tell me a thing. I’m sorry I’m not a genius kid like you were, but maybe if you speak slowly I’ll make sense of some of it?”
“It’s nothing to do with your brainpower,” Dad said calmly. “Don’t put yourself down. Your intelligence happens to be a little above the national average.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said. “What ARE those UFOs? Where do they come from?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“OK – where do I come from?”
Dad stiffened like it was suddenly ten below freezing. “You’re my son.”
“I can’t just be yours, can I?” I threw up my arms in frustration. “Look, I really need the truth, OK? And don’t tell me again that the aliens just dropped me off at the Space Centre one day – or, with all these lights in the sky, I’ll start worrying they’ve come to take me back!”
“We are not having this discussion.” Dad turned and walked calmly out of the room, like he’d switched to Vulcan mode – no emotions allowed.
“Why not!” I yelled after him. “Tell me, or . . . or I’ll go out and eat a cheeseburger! A massive, double Triple Bacon Royale Half-Pounder dripping with fat and dead animal juice and jammed full of cow bums and intestines and livers and a hoof . . . and . . .”
I shut up with a sigh. I was making myself feel sick. I heard Dad close his bedroom door. I went upstairs and slammed mine. Herbert gave me a fishy look as I stomped over to the open window and stared out into dark skies as blank as my understanding of Dad and his world.
The strange lights in the blackness would never be seen in such numbers again. The UFOs had gone. For now, anyway.
But Planet Earth’s real troubles were just beginning . . .