To Christina Hummel and the Class of 2023—JM
For my dad, with love and gratitude—EC
For the late, great, animal-loving, artist extraordinaire Laura Diedrick—RM
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Text copyright © 2020 by John Bemelmans Marciano and Emily Chenoweth. Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Robb Mommaerts. All rights reserved. Published by Penguin Workshop, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. PENGUIN and PENGUIN WORKSHOP are trademarks of Penguin Books Ltd, and the W colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Ebook ISBN 9781524787301
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright
Raj
Klawde
Chapter 0
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
About the Authors
Meanwhile . . .
RAJ
My name is Raj. I’m a regular kid from Brooklyn who just moved across the country to Elba, Oregon. I hated it when I was forced to come here, but now I kind of like it. I have a mom, a dad, and a very special cat—Klawde!
KLAWDE
My name is not Klawde. It is Lord High Emperor Wyss-Kuzz, the Magnificent. I was exiled across the universe to this backward planet of furless ogres known as Earth. I hated it when I was forced to come here, and now I hate it even more.
CHAPTER 0
Perched upon the dining table, I gazed out over a scene of destruction. I had shredded a pillow, mutilated a houseplant, and toppled every vase I could find.
Usually such random acts of violence did much to improve my mood. Today, however, they did nothing to curb my rage.
Though I had suffered endless humiliations from the moment I set paw on this miserable planet, nothing—not living with ogres, having to lick my own fur, or being repeatedly betrayed by my enemies—could compare to the news I had received three moonrises ago. On my home planet, I was being called Wyss-Kuzz the . . . the . . . Dog Lover.
Hiss!
I was about to do something truly terrible when the communicator rang. I raced down to the bunker. My minion, Flooffee-Fyr, was calling.
“Tell me quickly,” I said. “Have you yet convinced the felines of Lyttyrboks that I am not friends with that despicable spacemutt?”
“Um . . . well, not really, Supreme Leader.”
“Does this mean that they are still calling me Wyss-Kuzz the—hack hack—Dog Lover?”
“Oh no,” Flooffee said, brightening. “They’re not calling you that at all anymore.”
My rage softened. My hopes soared. Finally, the mood of the mob had turned!
“They’re more calling you, uh . . .” Flooffee paused. “Well . . . now they’re calling you Wyss-Kuzz the Butt-Sniffer.”
It took all my training—all the discipline in my warrior soul—not to begin a new rampage of destruction. My claws pulsed with the urge to wreak havoc. I had not felt fury like this in—in—well, in at least five minutes.
Flooffee blinked stupidly at me.
“What?” I roared. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Um, I was just wondering?” he said. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“Have you ever sniffed a dog’s butt?”
HISSSS!
“Or Flabby’s butt?”
I hung up on the infuriating fool and went upstairs to take a Focus Nap.
Upon reaching this state of higher feline consciousness, certain facts became clear to me. My current reputation made the reconquest of Lyttyrboks impossible at present. But in the meantime, it was crucial that I keep my conquesting skills sharp. If I didn’t, what would Generalissima Zok say at the next meeting of the Allied Warlords of Evil club? It was imperative that I vanquish a planet—any planet, no matter how vile or backward it might be.
This, naturally, led me to think of Earth.
CHAPTER 1
“Klawde!” I yelled as I came inside and dropped my backpack in the hall. “Where are you?”
There was no answer, so I grabbed a handful of potato chips and went upstairs. He was asleep on my pillow, and considering the mood he’d been in lately, I decided not to wake him. Besides, I could hardly wait to open my computer and get online. Because today was the day the new VisionQuest Ultra was being released!
The VQ Ultra was the best virtual reality headset money could buy. It was insanely light, wireless, and it came with six motion sensors that tracked your every move. It even had a connected drone, which you could control with the headset. I had to buy the VQ Ultra! The only problem was how much it cost.
It was $1,286—and that was just for the headset. With all the cool accessories, it cost twice as much.
How would I ever come up with that kind of money? My allowance was ten bucks a week, and that was only if I actually did all my chores.
I tortured myself watching launch videos of the VQ Ultra until my computer crashed. I rebooted it, and five minutes later the stupid thing crashed again. It was Mom’s old laptop—from, like, before I was born—and it barely worked for anything but email.
Luckily, I had a cat who could help fix it.
“Hey, Klawde—”
“No.”
�
�Come on, Klawde. Please?”
He growled at me. “I am exceedingly busy.”
“Busy? You’ve been sleeping this whole time!”
“Incorrect. I was engaged in a Focus Nap, followed by a Strategy Nap—two of the nine fundamental nap states.”
“Please?” I begged him. “My computer keeps crashing.”
Klawde flicked his tail. “Ask in the proper manner.”
I sighed. I hated when he made me do this.
“O All-Powerful Lord and Master, can you please assist a lowly, furless, pathetic Human and fix this computer?”
“That was better,” he said. “Let me consider it. No.”
CHAPTER 2
Earth was hardly worth conquering, of course, as it was small, teeming with ogres, and in a particularly unattractive corner of the universe. This was why none of the other members of the Allied Warlords of Evil had bothered to vanquish it.
Still, I needed something to occupy my time between naps.
As I pondered how to crush Earth, however, certain problems presented themselves. Most signficantly, no matter how feeble the Human mind might be, the Human body was immensely strong.
Since these ogres could not be subjugated by brute force, I would need to use my superior feline brain. As the ancients say, ’Tis not the sharp claw, but the sharp mind that makes the victor.
I was considering my options when the boy-Human interrupted me with his latest complaint about his internet-access device. He wanted me to repair it, but its technology was almost incomprehensibly crude. He might as well hand me two sticks and expect me to create nuclear fusion.
“For what pointless Human purpose do you need this machine?”
He explained that he wanted to watch videos of something called the VisionQuest Ultra. Placed upon one’s head, he informed me, this instrument allowed its wearer to see, hear, and act in any environment that could be imagined.
“They call it virtual reality,” he said. “And I want it.”
“Well of course you would want to escape your reality,” I said.
He failed to understand my biting wit.
“It’s like you’re in a different world, in someone else’s body,” he said. “And you’re controlling everything they do.”
My whiskers twitched.
“Controlling them, you say?”
The boy then brought out his phone so that we could watch a video advertising the device. As the capacity of this wearable technology became clear, my fur began to stand on end. Could this cumbersome Human gadget be repurposed for my own ends?
It was extremely primitive, of course. And yet it was not unlike the devices we used to manage our worker robots back on Lyttyrboks. And then it struck me. The Zom-Beam! My most brilliant creation! If I paired this Human apparatus with the Zom-Beam’s mind-controlling psylo-waves, this pathetic planet would be mine for the taking!
“Ogre, let us get this device,” I said. “RIGHT NOW.”
CHAPTER 3
I had to explain to Klawde that getting the VQ Ultra wasn’t that simple.
“What do you mean?” he said. “Just go to the virtual reality store and seize it!”
“First of all, there is no ‘virtual reality store,’” I said. “And second of all, even if there was, we couldn’t just take it.”
Klawde’s tail swished. “But that is how one gets things,” he said. “By taking them from others.”
“Maybe on Lyttyrboks,” I said. “But here on Earth, if you want something, you have to pay for it.”
“Ogre, it is only my enemies who must pay.”
“I’m not talking about revenge, Klawde,” I said. “I’m talking about money.”
“Money!” Klawde spat. “What is this ‘money’ you ogres endlessly babble on about, anyway?”
I didn’t really know how to explain money to a cat, even one who was smarter than me.
“It’s sort of like trading,” I said. “Sometimes I trade old comics with friends. But if I want a new comic, I have to go to a store and give them money. So basically I trade money for the comic.”
“Ah, so this ‘money’ is of high value,” Klawde said. “Is it delicious food? Exotic feathers? A pawheld particle accelerator?”
“Uh, no,” I said, pulling a crumpled dollar bill out of my pocket. “It’s this.”
CHAPTER 4
The concept of trading I understood, as it is practiced in all the inhabited galaxies. But everywhere else, one trades items of equal value—say, a Torgrassian torpedo for an exuviating robot. Or, as in the case of the squirrel mercenaries of the planet Wuud, nuts for their military service.
But “money”—what was it?
The boy-ogre reached into one of the storage pouches located in his leg-coverings and pulled out a small piece of paper. “This is a dollar.”
I had seen these green rectangles covered with crude Human scribblings before. Naturally, I had assumed they were portraits of particularly ugly relatives of theirs. But they were for trade? For payment?
“But it’s just paper,” I said. “It is worthless.”
“Well, it’s not worthless to humans, because we all want it.” He held up more of these green rectangles with ancient ogres on them. “If you took all these to the grocery store, you could buy a pound of butter and a carton of milk. If you had twelve hundred eighty-six of them, you could buy a VQ Ultra.”
“So let me see if I have this correct. These ‘dollars’ are abstract credits that Humans trade with one another because you simply agree that they are worth something?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
A system based on trust? No wonder we did not use dollars on Lyttyrboks.
“Is money the only thing we can use to purchase the technology?”
“It’s the only way to get pretty much anything.”
Although the very notion of these dollars disgusted me, this “VQ” could well be the missing piece to my Zom-Beam, the prototype of which remained buried in my litter box command center. If I could link the headset controller, the flying drone, and the Zom-Beam’s mind-controlling rays, I could strike any target I chose from the comfort of my own bunker!
“Fine, ogre,” I said. “Tell me how we acquire the dollars we need.”
“Well, the very best way of getting money,” the boy-ogre said, “is to get your parents to give you some.”
CHAPTER 5
“Absolutely not,” Mom said. “You just had a birthday.”
“I’ll pay you back,” I said. “I swear.”
“You’ll pay me back over twelve hundred dollars?” Mom crossed her arms. “How?”
I didn’t have an answer to that question.
“Sit down, Raj,” she said. “I think we should have a little talk.”
Ugh. I hated Mom’s talks.
“Money, Raj,” Mom said, “is something that we earn.” After that, my ears pretty much shut off. She was saying something about how a penny saved is a penny earned—which makes no sense—when Dad walked into the kitchen.
“You need a little extra money, son? You could do some extra chores,” he said. “Like make me a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich!”
Mom and I both rolled our eyes.
“With the way you guys pay me for chores, I’ll be ancient by the time I make enough to buy the VQ,” I said. “Like your age.”
“Well, I know one way you can make money, and it’s not even a chore,” Mom said. “Have a yard sale. We’ve only lived in this house a few months, and somehow it’s already completely filled with junk.” She glared at Dad.
“We haven’t even unpacked everything yet!” he said.
“If you haven’t needed it by now, Krish,” Mom said, “then you don’t need it at all.”
“But somewhere in one of those boxes is my handheld, battery-operated milk frother! I bou
ght it when I was in dental school, and I still haven’t had the chance to use it.”
“Which only proves my point,” Mom said.
“But I need it for when I open my Italian-style cafe,” he said. “Krish’s Koffee!”
Mom turned to me. “Raj, if it’s in a moving box, you can sell it.”
CHAPTER 6
On what the Humans call “Saturday,” the boy-ogre began to lay out items on a large table in the driveway. I was pleased to see how much he was finding to sell. However worthless these articles would seem to any sensible being in the universe, surely other ogres would pay many dollars for them. And then we would possess vast riches!
“Let us also get rid of that hideous rope sculpture,” I said, as I watched him attach tiny pieces of sticky paper—“price tags,” he called them—to the objects.
“You mean the scratching post Dad bought you?”
“It is useless to me,” I said. “I prefer his shins.”
The boy-ogre next went to a corner of the garage where dozens of cardboard boxes were stacked.
“Ah, a fine idea for making dollars!” I said. “These sleeping chambers must be worth a fortune.” As far as I was concerned, they were the only thing of value in this barbarian wasteland.
“Not so much,” he said. “It’s the stuff inside them that might be worth something.”
The boy-ogre gazed into one, and an especially pitiful look came over his face.
“Brownie,” he said.
The boy-ogre held up what appeared to be a small species of bear, the likes of which I had never seen before. I sank into Defensive Crouch. Had the beast been hibernating? Was it still alive?
It was not. But perhaps it once had been, and the Humans had preserved its body.
“It’s my old teddy bear,” the boy-ogre said. He reached into the box again. “And here’s the monkey I got for my sixth birthday, and the penguin I won at the fair . . .”
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