“How come you’re not weirded out by the aliens?” I asked.
“Well, I read every single post on the Peaceful Extraterrestrial’s Guide to Earth blog. I was wondering when I’d run into those fellas.”
“So you were one of the other likes on all our blog posts!” I said.
“Of course,” she boasted. “I’m very proud of my netiquette.”
“I still wonder who that fourth like was from,” I said.
“Nobody I know.” Mrs. Fairchild shrugged. “I didn’t even tell Quenty about the blog, not since you badmouthed him so much.”
“Um, sorry about that,” I said.
“Oh, I was a kid once, too. I love my Quenty, but I can see why you might sometimes call him a . . . what was the term, a horse butt creep?” She looked fondly toward the bathroom. “What are they doing in there anyway?”
I sighed. “Just determining the fate of the planet.”
“Fun!” she replied, and then she scurried back upstairs.
CHAPTER 16
Lloyd and I listened at the bathroom door. We were hoping we’d hear the sounds of a historic peace accord being brokered, or at least get a heads-up if our planet was doomed.
“All I hear is lots of farting,” I said.
“Sorry, that was me,” Lloyd confessed. “Those flaxseed brownies were surprisingly tasty.”
It was no use. We backed away from the door and started walking around the room. “I just hope they hurry,” I said. “How long do we have?”
I could tell from the look on Lloyd’s face that it wasn’t long. “Um, six minutes till we have to leave.”
I groaned, gazing around the room to take my mind off the time. I realized Quentin was working on a lot more projects than I ever would’ve guessed. Vaccines, medicines, inventions. There must’ve been a hundred ways he was working to make the world a little bit better.
“You see that?” Lloyd said.
“Yeah, maybe he’s not so bad,” I admitted.
“What? I’m talking about his shrine to himself.” He pointed to a display case full of awards, plaques, and framed magazine covers, all proclaiming how special Quentin was. There was a trophy in the shape of a cat and another one in the shape of a syringe. There was his Newsweek cover, along with one for Scientific American and a Rolling Stone where he listed his favorite songs about medicine and/or cats. Lloyd was pretending like he was about to throw up, but I couldn’t help feeling like Quentin had earned everything in there. He worked hard for his accomplishments. Why shouldn’t he be proud?
“What if we’re the donkey-butt jerks, Lloyd?” I said.
“Us! Why would you say that?”
“Because we’ve spent all this time trying to make him look bad. Trying to outdo him. And why? He’s done a lot of good things.” I picked up a vial labeled FELINE CHICKEN POX VACCINE. “Look, he cured a disease. Maybe he’s allowed to have a bit of an ego.”
Lloyd took the vial from me. He clearly hadn’t heard a word I said. “I wonder if we can use this to bargain. Tell the aliens if they go home, they can have it. Then, they’ll never get feline chicken pox on their planet.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” I replied. “A vaccine is just a weakened version of a virus. Our bodies are used to viruses, so a small dose helps us learn how to defend against it. The aliens have never known diseases like ours, so they don’t have the same immune systems. This little bit of virus could make them very sick.”
“I guess,” Lloyd said. “They’re so whiny about having a little cold, I can only imagine how they’d handle chicken pox.”
“Maybe we need to grow up,” I sighed. I gazed at the bathroom door. “Any second now, he’ll come bursting out of there telling us he saved the world.”
Before Lloyd could respond, the bathroom door flew open. Quentin spread his arms out and proclaimed, “I’ve saved the world!”
I smiled at Lloyd, relieved. I couldn’t believe it, but I actually wanted to hug Quentin.
“You worked everything out?” Lloyd asked.
“Absolutely!” IAmAWeenieBurger said. “Quentin made some awesome points. And Muddy’s speech was killer.”
“Aw, thanks,” Mr. Mudd blushed.
Lloyd shook his head. “Well, buttheads, I’ll be sad to see you go.”
“Go?” IAmAWeenieBurger said. “No. We’re not going.”
“Mr. Mudd,” I said, “didn’t you convince them that they have to leave?”
Mr. Mudd shuffled his feet. “Well, they found my speech quite persuasive, but then they had a speech of their own, and wow, that really changed everything.”
“A speech of their own?” I repeated, nervously.
“Yes!” IAmAWeenieBurger said. “We declared that we will never leave the great planet of Quentonia.”
“What?”
IAmAWeenieBurger shrugged. “Mr. Mudd explained how seventy billion buttheads showing up was gonna be a little weird for you guys. So we agreed to make a few changes to smooth things over. Let your new leader tell you about it.” He motioned toward Quentin.
“Our new leader?” I said.
“Well, officially my title will be the Ultimate Supreme President of the Native Residents of Quentonia.”
“Does this mean we won’t be stuck picking junk out of their toes?” I asked.
“Well, we won’t,” Quentin said, motioning to himself and Mr. Mudd. “I’ll be too busy overseeing the design of our new currency, Quentmarks.” He held up a roughly sketched dollar bill, with a drawing of his smiling face right in the center.
“That’s what you were doing in there?” I shouted, ripping the drawing from his hands. “That’s what you were negotiating?”
“You sold us out!” Lloyd said. “And Mr. Mudd! You should be ashamed. What did they make you? Super President?”
IAmAWeenieBurger bowed his head. “He will be the Assistant Undersecretary of Submission and Subservience.”
“That’s what you sold us out for?”
“It’s a growth position,” Mr. Mudd said with a shrug.
Lloyd stood up on a chair, fuming. “Enough! We need to start this negotiation over, right now, and we won’t stop until—”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
“Lloyd,” I interrupted. I nodded toward his watch as its alarm sounded.
“Josh, the fate of the world . . .” Lloyd said.
“Yeah, but my parents,” I reminded him. “You promised.”
Lloyd nodded and shut off the stopwatch. He quietly stepped down from the chair. “Never mind.” He sighed. “Josh and I have to go.”16
We walked back to my house, dragging the cooler behind us in silence. Doodoofartmama wanted to stay at Quentin’s, but IAmAWeenieBurger thought it would be easier for the seventy billion aliens on their way to Earth to find them if they stayed at my place. Plus, Quentin didn’t have any video games, and IAmAWeenieBurger was hoping to start playing Galacto Blast 8 before the invasion began.
I wanted to kick myself for ever thinking Quentin was a good guy. He only cared about himself. If anything, we’d been too nice to him. If only the whole world knew the real Quentin. Now I’d be home just in time to face my parents, only to have to break the news to them that I’d handed the Earth over to a bunch of buttheads, including the biggest butthead of all, Quentin Fairchild.
“We should take this cooler and leave it on the freeway,” Lloyd said. “Maybe a truck will run over it.”
“Someone could get hurt, though,” I said.
“Then we should bury it in toxic waste at the bottom of a landfill!”
I shook my head. “That might just turn them into mighty mutated super-aliens.”
Lloyd nodded in agreement. We both knew we were too peaceful and nice to do the buttheads any real harm.
Then suddenly, Lloyd stopped walking. “Hey, Josh. What’s that thing?”
We looked ahead of us on the sidewalk, where a furry creature with a big bushy tail stared at us with angry eyes. As we looked back at it, it hissed and then
scurried away, racing up a tree trunk in a split second. I barely got a look at it, but it was like nothing I’d ever seen.
“I don’t know, but it seemed diseased,” I said. “Maybe President Quentin can cure it when he’s done putting his face on Mount Rushmore.”
“Uh-oh,” Lloyd said. “That reminds me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the vial of Feline Chicken Pox vaccine.
“You took that with you?” I asked.
“I was mad. I wanted to do something mean. I guess I’ll just throw it away before it gets the aliens sick.”
He went to toss it in the bushes, but I grabbed his arm. “Wait. That’s actually not a bad idea.”
“What do you mean?”
I opened the cooler, where our two mushed-up friends sloshed around in one big brick of burnt sienna slush.
“Josh, what are you doing?” Lloyd asked. The butthead eyes sloshed around in the foul pool of number four, and as Lloyd spoke, they turned and peered upward at him.
I quickly pulled him aside and whispered softly to him. “Lloyd, they’re just going to the bathroom in there. Remember, they can still hear us.”
He nodded and lowered his voice. “You said it would be bad to give them the vaccine!”17
“Only if we want them to stay healthy. Maybe a little feline chicken pox will finally change their feelings about this planet.”
“Whoa, that’s harsh, Josh!” Lloyd said. I think he was actually kind of impressed with me.
“Those buttheads messed with the wrong planet,” I replied. “See if you can distract them while I pour it in.”
“On it,” Lloyd said, confidently. I followed him back over to the cooler, sure he was devising another genius plan. “Hey, look! Oreos!” he shouted, pointing off into the distance.
The four butthead eyes all followed him, and I knew I only had a second to make this work. I ripped off the top of the vial and poured the vaccine into the swirling butthead soup. Success. I managed to sneak it in without them seeing.
“Oh, never mind,” Lloyd said to the disappointed aliens. “It was just a Chips Ahoy.”
We closed the lid to the cooler and continued our sad march home. All I could do now was cross my fingers on the remote chance that this crazy plan might actually work.
16 Sometimes, allowing aliens to destroy the Earth is just the kind of thing you do for your friends. Read more about friends in our blog on page 272.
17 This will probably make more sense after you’ve read our blog on vaccines, on page 273. (Or possibly not. It’s a complicated topic.)
CHAPTER 17
My parents were due to get home so soon that Lloyd and I lugged that cooler in record time. When we finally shoved it through my front door, we were so exhausted we both wanted to collapse. We couldn’t, though; not yet. We still had to carry the cooler upstairs to my room. We took it one agonizing step at a time. Thump! Thump! Thump! It felt like it would be hours before we’d reach the top of the staircase.
We had about three steps left to go when I heard my parents’ car pull up in the driveway. It took every ounce of energy I had left, but I gasped out the last word either of us wanted to hear at that moment: “Hurry.”
Thump! Thump! Just as the front door opened, we slid the cooler into my room and closed the door behind us.
Lloyd knew he couldn’t stick around, so he took the secret exit route he used in emergencies like this, out my bedroom window.
“Well,” he said, with one foot dangling over my backyard, “you sure are fun to hang out with, Josh.”
“Thanks, Lloyd,” I replied. “If life sucks after tomorrow, I’ll at least be glad we got to be friends first.”
Lloyd raised a hand in salute, then leapt out the window into the bushes. “Remember,” he called up to me, as he brushed the leaves off his clothes, “the fate of the world rests in your hands. No pressure.”
Jerk.
The aliens began to take shape from the grotesque goo in the cooler. I watched them materialize, looking out for any sign of itchy red bumps on their skin. It was hard to tell, since they were still mostly liquid.
“Josh!” My mom was calling me from downstairs. The timing was terrible. Couldn’t she wait a minute?
“Josh, are you there?” my dad asked.
I wondered how long I could continue to ignore them. At some point, they’d surely come upstairs. Maybe that would be for the best. If they saw the buttheads, then I could explain everything. I’d tell them how I made the website with Lloyd, how we snuck two aliens out of the ladies’ room at Chop Socky in a stolen double stroller, how Doodoofartmama rang up nine hundred dollars in iPhone charges, how they drank my dad’s Australian soda and replaced it with a store brand, and how seventy billion more buttheads were just a few light-years away from taking the interstellar off-ramp to Earth.
But they didn’t come upstairs. They just waited, calling up to me and sounding a little more disappointed each time I didn’t respond. “Josh! Josh?” I think they were worried that I wasn’t there like I was supposed to be, but they didn’t want to come and check, just in case it was true.
I decided not to wait for the aliens to finish taking shape, and I headed into the hallway. “Hi,” I said, glancing downstairs at my parents.
When they saw me, they seemed surprised for a second, and then they smiled. “Hello, son,” my dad replied.
I tried to talk, but nothing came out, so I ran downstairs and pulled them both into a tight hug. “I’m really, really sorry,” I finally managed to say.
We hugged for a long time, and then my mother backed away. She had something to say, something important it seemed. Was it a message of forgiveness? I looked into her eyes, hopefully, then waited.
“Dinner’s in half an hour,” she said, at last. Then she turned away and headed toward the kitchen. My dad nodded and followed her, leaving me standing at the base of the staircase, alone.
I desperately wanted a chance to mend my relationship with my parents, but I knew this wasn’t the right time. First, I had to check on the buttheads. They’d be back in their bodies by now. I took a deep breath and marched upstairs.
I found the aliens gazing through my telescope at the night sky. I looked up and down their bodies, but there was no sign of chicken pox. They looked perfectly healthy, and more excited than I’d ever seen them.
“We have great news, Josh!” IAmAWeenieBurger announced. “The buttheads are coming!”
They backed away from the telescope to give me a look. Nervously, I peered through the eyepiece at where they had pointed the lens. At first, it looked like an asteroid field, a crowded section of space full of floating rocks and junk. But as my eye adjusted, I realized I was seeing something far more upsetting.
Spaceships.
Thousands of them.
They were different shapes and sizes, some as small as a bus and others as large as the moon. I felt a pit in my stomach, but the buttheads were jumping for joy.
“They’re almost here! They’re almost here!”
“FRRT! FRRT! FRRT!”
Their excited farts smelled the worst, which only made me feel crummier.
It must’ve been obvious that I didn’t share their joy, because Doodoofartmama stopped jumping and poked IAmAWeenieBurger. “FRRT,” he said, gesturing at me with two of his hands.
“Don’t be sad,” IAmAWeenieBurger said. “You’re gonna be the most awesome human on Earth, dude.”
“I will?” I said. “What about Quentin? Or Mr. Mudd?”
IAmAWeenieBurger shrugged. “They have flashy titles, but those jobs are just a lot of paperwork. You’ll be killing it on the social scene. You were our first Earth host, man, the whole reason our planet-mates came here. You’ll be a superstar. Buttheads will be dying to take selfies with you. They’ll buy you all the waffles you can eat. They’ll make video games about you!”
I hadn’t thought about it before, but it did sound kind of cool. When the buttheads got here, I would be famous. They say hist
ory is written by the winners. Well, if things went as it seemed like they would, that meant the authors of our next history books would have butt cheeks in their craniums. I would be their Christopher Columbus. Lloyd would be their Benjamin Franklin. We would be the two greatest Earthlings ever, the ones who sold them the deed to this carbon-rich blue boulder wrapped up in breathable air. Forget George Washington or Martin Van Buren. Lloyd Ruggles and Josh McBain would be the names little buttheaded kids would toot out of their jagged green cracks a hundred years from now to win their Smart-Off.
I always got so jealous when people said Quentin was going to change the world. I knew that would never be me. I wasn’t special, at least not in a good way. I wasn’t a genius or a rock star or even mildly interesting. I was just like most kids, average and ordinary, bound for a run-of-the-mill life where nothing amazing ever happens. But that was about to change. When the aliens arrived, I’d be the most special person ever. I’d be the one on magazine covers. There would be statues of me in new alien cities. I could do anything I wanted.
I could have a sitcom, a talk show, even a cooking show, as long as I learned how to cook first. My autobiography would be a best seller, and schoolkids would do reports on me. If I felt like putting out an album, every superstar in the world would want to work with me. I could duet with Katy Perry or be the new lead singer of Coldplay. I could rap with Jay-Z and Pitbull, and my name would come first in the credits. We’d be listed as “MC-DJ Joshy Fresh Fresh With Jay-Z Featuring Pitbull.” I could travel the world—no, the universe even. I could have my own spaceship, and I could ride it to a different water park around the galaxy every week. I’d be the most famous boy who ever lived, because not only would every person on Earth know me, but so would seventy billion buttheads. I’d be unstoppable.
IAmAWeenieBurger and Doodoofartmama must’ve noticed me smiling, because they went back to celebrating. I took another look in the telescope at all the spaceships just a few planets away from arriving here. They didn’t seem so bad now. I started to think of them as swarms of fans, coming to meet me.
Buttheads from Outer Space Page 13