“I know,” I said. “Pathetic.”
“If you want something really unbreakable, I have that eight-to-the-billionth-power encryption we used to send orders to Colonel Akorn’s mercenaries during the War of Wall-Nutz. It uses a super-nifty Torg algorithm, and it’s got a Gallassian block cipher with—”
“Don’t talk to me about it,” I said. “Start coding!”
“Okay, O Grandest Leader,” he said. “No problemo. What are you going to name your money, anyway?”
I purred. “I shall call it . . . KitKoin!”
After all, “K” is the Humans’ most interesting letter.
CHAPTER 13
In the week and a half that the Three Gardeneers Lawn Care Company had been in business, I felt like I never stopped moving. Because in addition to the stuff I always had to do—homework, clubs, and chores—I also worked with Cedar and Steve every day. We bagged leaves, cleared brush, spread mulch, cleaned gutters, and pulled weeds till our fingers cramped. It was miserable. I was miserable. My nose ran constantly and I always felt tired and hungry.
So when I got home from raking up Mr. Wallace’s yard after school on Thursday, I collapsed onto the couch.
Mom was rushing around, getting ready for some kind of smart-person awards dinner.
“I must praise your industriousness, Raj,” she said as she kissed me goodbye. “Such initiative will one day be rewarded!”
That’s what I’d been hoping for, but the reward wasn’t coming fast enough. Even though it seemed like we were making a ton of money, split three ways it was not a lot. And my mom had decided that since I had a “new revenue stream,” I should buy my own ice cream and comics. Who knew that a rainbow sprinkle waffle cone with two scoops could cost six bucks?
I’d counted my money this morning and all I had was $117. At this rate, I’d have to work for a year before I could buy the VQ Ultra.
Dad wandered into the living room wearing a hat I was sure I had sold at the garage sale. “I’m mighty proud of you, too, son,” he said. “I can tell you’re working really hard.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I’m still not making that much.”
Dad’s face lit up. “Well, I can help you out with that.”
“Like with a loan?” I asked hopefully.
“With more work!” he said. “I’ve got some great ideas for those extra chores I was telling you about, buddy.” He sat down and wrote out a list.
“You want me to sort your baseball card collection? And make you a snack when you get home from work?” I said. “And help you put on your socks?”
“My back is so stiff in the mornings that it’s hard to bend over,” he said defensively. “And, you know, you should make yourself a snack, too.”
I shook my head no—until he handed me a ten. “Here’s an advance.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Just don’t tell your mother,” he said.
“That’ll cost you extra.”
Dad laughed, but I was serious.
“Now, how about you get off that couch and make us some popcorn?”
CHAPTER 14
It had been a trying ten moonrises.
My minion, working at his typical plodding pace, had taken three of them to create the most sophisticated virtual money Earth had ever seen. Yet somehow the Humans did not race to purchase my currency.
It was not until I bombarded online news outlets with the propaganda the Humans call a “press release” that the ogres began to take notice.
Now sales were moving briskly. Checking my account, I was pleased to note that I had made well over $100,000.
In the last hour.
My good mood was somewhat dampened by the wheezing sound of the boy-ogre trudging up the stairs. He was muddy and exhausted, with his brains again leaking out of his nose.
“You really should get that looked at,” I said.
He fell facedown upon the sleeping platform and told me how much money he had made today.
“Wow, fifteen entire dollars,” I said. “How very impressive.”
In the six seconds it had taken me to speak, I calculated that I had made $168.
The boy-ogre might not be getting the VQ Ultra anytime soon. But I could think of someone who would be.
Purr.
CHAPTER 15
On Sunday morning, a phone call woke me up. I covered my head with my pillow, but whoever it was kept calling. Didn’t they know it was the weekend?
“Steve,” I said, finally picking up. “Why are you calling me so early?”
“Early?” he said. “It’s after ten! We were supposed to be at the new job already. Didn’t you get all my texts?”
I groaned.
“I’m on your porch, by the way.”
Grumbling, I went downstairs and let Steve in. While he read an old copy of Americaman, I got dressed, shoved a pack of Kleenex into my pocket, and took some allergy medicine. We met Cedar in front of her house, and then the three of us biked to a neighborhood I hadn’t been to before. Cedar told me it was called Waterloo, and it was where all the rich kids lived.
“Here’s the place!” Steve said, stopping in front of a huge leaf-covered lawn.
“Whoa,” Cedar said, grinning. “We’re going to make a serious payday.”
But then she looked at the name on the mailbox, and her expression changed.
“Hold on,” she said, “please tell me this is not—”
“What’s up, losers!”
“—Scorpion’s yard!”
A narrow, mean face was peering down at us from an attic window.
“Have fun cleaning up after T-Rex, nerds!” he yelled.
I looked closer at the yard. The grass was high, but it didn’t hide the giant piles of poop.
Steve turned to me in horror. “Does Scorpion have an actual dinosaur?”
A man walked out of the house who must have been Scorpion’s dad, even though he looked totally nice and normal. “Hey, kids,” he said. “Glad you could make it. My son said I should call you because you could really use the money. Pretty thoughtful of him, huh?”
Yeah, real thoughtful.
“Before we rake, sir, there’s a lot of . . . um, extra stuff in the yard,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“It’s, well . . .” Cedar said.
“Your yard is full of mountains of dog poop!” Steve blurted out.
Scorpion’s dad squinted into the grass, then turned to the window that Scorpion’s head was still poking out of. “Son, when was the last time you scooped the poop?” he hollered up.
Scorpion shrugged. “I don’t know, a few months ago. Who cares? These Gardeneers can take care of it.”
“Son, poop-scooping is your job, and T-Rex is your Great Dane,” his father said firmly. “Come down here this instant. I hired your friends to pick up leaves, not doggie doo-doo.”
Scorpion let out a scream of disgust as his face disappeared from the window and he slammed it shut.
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Scorpion,” Steve said.
“Mr. Who?” he asked.
“Nothing!” Cedar said quickly. “We appreciate your business, sir.”
CHAPTER 16
1 KitKoin = 898.31 dollars . . . 1 KitKoin = 901.17 dollars . . . 1 KitKoin = 902.99 dollars . . . 1 KitKoin = 904.08 dollars . . .
The numbers crawled across the bottom of the screen as the LootCounter app monitored the meteoric rise of my currency. It was a most pleasing thing to watch.
My communicator rang. Normally I loathed interruptions—particularly when coming from Flooffee-Fyr—but this time I did not mind, as it is hard to brag only to oneself.
“Greetings, flunky,” I said. “No doubt you are calling to praise me for my brilliance.”
“Uh . . . not so much, actually,” he said. “I mean, I
’m sure we can get to that and all. But first I was wondering—”
“Thanks to KitKoin, every few naptimes I make tens of thousands of dollars.”
“Is that a lot?”
“I’m not sure. But I think I am extremely rich.”
“That’s, uh, really great,” he said. “But I called with a question? I’m—”
“You are wanting me to reveal the true reason I desire so many Earth dollars!”
“Actually, Your Masterfulness, I—”
“Well, I will tell you. I have discovered ogre technology that will allow me to execute my newest evil scheme, which is actually an old evil scheme. Do you remember . . . the ZOM-BEAM?”
“Of course I do,” Flooffee said. “I’m the one who created it, O Overreaching Master.”
“You created it? Hah!” I scoffed. “You may have designed it, but it was I who managed to fashion one here on Earth out of the junk of the ogres.”
“Well, it’s not like it worked . . . ,” he muttered under his breath.
I ignored his insolence. “My new Zom-Beam will function perfectly once it is finished. Many expensive, high-precision instruments have already been delivered by the brown-suited ogre who drives the box truck. However, the most important component—the VQ Ultra—is stuck on planet Back Order.”
The good news was that the technology was finally supposed to arrive tomorrow. I only hoped that the delivery ogre would again come while the Humans were gone.
I allowed myself a small purr of satisfaction. “I had forgotten how much fun it is to make plans to conquer a planet—even one as backward as this.”
“Okay, well, getting back to why I called, I just have one quick question before—”
“I must say I find myself almost feeling affection for Earth,” I went on. “These are its last days of independence, Flooffee. Soon the entire world will be mi—”
“ALL-POWERFUL LEADER! Which one of Lyttyrboks’s eighty-seven moons is your favorite?”
“What?”
“I said, which one of the eighty-seven moons—”
“I heard you,” I said. “And the question is absurd because the answer is so patently obvious. My favorite is number sixty-three.”
After all, did any other moon have over thirty thousand species of plump, flightless birds?
“Now where was I?” I said. “Oh, yes. Soon the entire world will be mine!”
CHAPTER 17
As I passed Lindy’s house on the way home from school on Monday, her mom waved me over and handed me three crisp twenty-dollar bills, one for each of the Gardeneers. “I’m so sorry I made you wait to get paid, Raj. Like I said, I never seem to have actual cash in my wallet.”
My parents said that all the time, but it was usually because they didn’t want to buy me stuff.
“It’s a good thing you don’t charge in KitKoin,” she said. “Otherwise what I owe you from last week would be a whole lot more today!”
“KitKoin?” I said.
“Oh, sorry—computer nerd alert!” She made a goofy face and an alarm sound. “Blockchain technology, crypto markets, hash-based signature trees—they fascinate me.”
I didn’t understand a single word of what she’d just said. She kept on talking, though, and I did pick up that KitKoin was a new kind of cybercurrency that had gotten super popular, super fast.
“And no one even knows who created it,” she said. “It’s all very mysterious.”
“It sounds cool,” I said.
“Cool, yes. But also a bit troubling,” she said. “When you have a new global currency and its founder is anonymous, you have to hope they are not a hostile entity.” Then she smiled brightly. “But look at me, going on and on about this stuff! I tell you what, if you want to make a little more of that good old-fashioned paper money, you and your crew can clean my gutters.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “We’ll get on that right away.”
When I turned to go home, I saw a UPS truck parked in front of my house. I caught the delivery guy as he was leaving a stack of packages on our porch. “You need me to sign?” I asked.
He looked at the order. “Nope. No signature required. Raj Banerjee does live here, right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
The guy smiled. “That’s good, because I’ve been leaving boxes for him all week.”
That was weird. Packages for me?
I looked down, and sure enough, every single one of them had my name on it. I opened the one on top and—
No freaking way.
I ran inside the house, leaving a trail of styrofoam peanuts on the floor behind me. But I didn’t believe it was real until I was holding it in my hands.
The VQ Ultra!
I yelped—I actually yelped. And jumped up in the air.
It was the entire VQ UltraMax suite! With all six motion sensors. And the noise-canceling earphones! And—whoa!—the last box was the ultra-lightweight auto-sync seeing-eye drone!
I called my dad right away.
“Dad!” I said when he picked up. “You’re the best! Did you get all this for me because I took off your socks? Or because of all the snacks? Thank you so much!”
“I got you what now?”
I told him, and he said he had nothing to do with it.
“Your mother would be furious with me if I got you all that. Besides,” he started to whisper, “I just bought a KitKoin!”
KitKoin again! It was weird how suddenly everyone was talking about it.
“It was really expensive, but if it keeps going up in value like it’s been doing, I’ll buy you whatever you wa—oh, sorry, Mrs. Moseley!” I heard aggravated mumbling in the background. “Gotta go, son! Molars to fill.”
I hung up the phone, confused.
If Dad didn’t get me the headset—and I knew Mom hadn’t—who did? But then I realized I didn’t really care. I’d just have to make sure Mom didn’t catch me playing it. Which I was going to start doing right now!
CHAPTER 18
What gall! When I entered the boy-ogre’s lair, I saw him jumping up and down and waving his arms in a violent frenzy—wearing my VQ Ultra!
“GIVE ME THAT!”
I swiped his shin with my claws, leaving a trail of four bloody lines.
“Ouch!” he said, pulling his leg away. “What was that for?”
“Your skin is touching my technology,” I said.
The ogre removed the headset and stared at me stupidly for many seconds.
“Wait—you were the one who ordered this?”
I swished my tail in annoyance. As if it were any of his business.
“You didn’t use Dad’s credit card again, did you?” he said. “I told you, we could only get away with that once! And not for something that costs thousands of dollars.”
“I did not use your father’s plastic digits,” I said. “I bought the headset with my own money.”
I strategically ignored his many questions about how I had acquired this money, for he would surely want to share in my wealth. Meanwhile, I placed my head inside the device. It was awkwardly large, as it was made to fit an ogre’s skull. (Strange that the Human brain is so big and yet so fundamentally weak.)
The helmet was nothing more than a monitor with headphones. The key was that it could be paired with the camera-enabled drone. Once I attached the Zom-Beam to the underside of this drone, I would be able to deliver my mind-controlling psylo-waves with perfect precision.
“Can I at least finish my game?” the boy-ogre said sadly.
Foolish Human. He thought this VQ was a toy, when in fact it was the final piece of my ultimate weapon!
“Fine, you may ‘play,’” I told him, removing the ill-fitting helmet from my head.
This, too, suited my purposes. I needed to see what else this VQ was capable of.
CHAPTER 19
I tried a bunch of different games on the VQ, but the ones that sounded the coolest were also too intense. The flight simulator made me want to barf, and Zombie Dawn 8—which I loved on my Z-station—was terrifying on the VQ. It was just so real.
Eventually, I found Starista, where you worked at a coffee shop and made lattes for people and stuff. It sounded lame, but it was fun to make milk-foam designs and come up with crazy-sounding drinks. And I made 271 star-dollars in tips, which was a lot more than the real dollars I’d made as a Gardeneer.
“So let me see if I have this straight, Human,” Klawde said as he watched me play. “You dislike doing this thing called work, and yet when you can inhabit any reality you wish, you choose to work?”
“But it’s not really work,” I said. “It’s fun! Look at how I steam the foam on this mocha chai latte.”
It was really satisfying to hear the hiss of the steamer wand. And it looked so delicious!
“Riveting, truly.”
Would all cats be as sarcastic as Klawde if they spoke English?
“Let me try my paw at one of these ‘games,’ ogre,” he said. “Are there any battle simulators?”
“Tons,” I said. “But they’re really violent. And with the VQ, it’s all a little too realistic.”
Klawde didn’t care. He put on Bloody Combat Siege: Fall of Civilization III, which was pretty much the goriest game ever created.
He was really good at it. His tail got all puffed as he played, and swished from side to side. An hour later, he had made it to the final level.
“That was amusing,” he said, wiggling out of the gear.
“You could be a professional gamer, Klawde!” I said. “But you have to tell me—how did you get this system? It costs so much money. You got add-ons I didn’t even know existed.”
Klawde curled up on my bed and closed his eyes.
Target: Earth Page 3