by Paul Noth
Squeep! lifted the kazoo as I rose into the air.
What had the kazoo meant?
The drones carried the cylinder up the creature’s enormous chest and, sliding it back into its slot, trapped me in a crystalline prison.
The ground shifted beneath me like an earthquake as the colossus began to walk, with loud crunching footfalls, toward the portal to the deep-blue world.
The good news was that the monster was leaving without destroying the Earth. The bad news: it was taking me with it.
The colossus climbed through the circle, out of the Doorganizer, and into the blueness on the other side.
As we passed through, I saw that the reverse side of the circular portal had been formed by an enormous curving silver ring, carved in a pattern of reptilian scales that reminded me of something …
Grandma’s ring.
The portal looked like a giant circular serpent biting its own tail. The Ouroboros, but with a face more lizardy than snakelike. It looked a little like Squeep!’s face.
As I marveled up at it, one of its huge eyeballs rolled down at me.
It was alive! A living Ouroboros the size of a freight train.
It opened its huge jaw, releasing its tail from its mouth. Instantly, the portal to the Doorganizer vanished.
The Ouroboros uncoiled upon the air. It had six legs, black irises, and a long fluid body covered in scaly silver mail.
Its head and Squeep!-like eyes fixed down upon me while, all around us, its body twirled like the tail of a kite.
Meanwhile, the two owls had detached and were lowering my glass cell down toward a transport barge that floated in midair.
Upon this barge, monstrous man-size creatures fastened my cell to its platform.
My captors were all hideous to look at.
This one in the black hooded cloak, whose face resembled a giant insect’s body, was by far the worst:
After my first glimpse at him, I clutched a hand to my chest in fear I was having a heart attack. That’s when I found, in my shirt pocket, a folded piece of paper that hadn’t been there earlier.
I knew it was a note from Kayla before I unfolded it. She must have slipped it into my pocket back at school without me noticing.
CHAPTER 25
KAYLA’S NOTE
Dear Happy,
If you’re reading this, it means you stopped the black hole and we’re all still alive. Thank you! It was the only possible way, but I couldn’t tell you that without making the decision for you.
And it wasn’t my decision to make.
I knew that if I let you come to it on your own, you would do the right thing.
If there had been ANY other possible way … or if I could have gone in your place, I would not have hesitated.
I’m already working to help you get home.
It’s not going to be easy. We will need Alice’s help. That’s why I got her back into the Doorganizer. She had to watch you do what you—hopefully—did with her own eyes. Otherwise, in her current mental state, she wouldn’t have believed me about the threat or that you surrendered yourself to save the planet—and her precious closet—from destruction.
Now we can count her as an ally. And we’re going to need her and the power of the Doorganizer to get you back.
Please try to keep yourself safe and alive until I can figure out how to get to you.
Love,
Kayla
P.S. Sorry this wasn’t one of my usual notes. I wish I could see into the Doorganizer, but I can’t, so I don’t know what’s happening or what’s going to.
I had already guessed that it wasn’t one of her usual notes.
Normally, Kayla’s notes were all smeared with eraser marks, because Kayla could see the face of the person reading her words in the future. She tended to revise a lot based on different reactions. If you asked a question aloud while reading one of her regular notes, you’d likely find the answer written in the next line.
But Kayla couldn’t see into the Doorganizer, so she couldn’t see where I was now.
Was she planning to use Alice’s help to come through the Doorganizer to rescue me?
Dad had been very worried the last time Kayla had gone in there. He believed that mixing Kayla’s powers with those of the Doorganizer could be particularly catastrophic.
But, then again, Dad had believed emphatically that a living creature could not be a portal. And I was staring at proof that he had been wrong about this: the giant Ouroboros, flying along beside my captor’s craft, stared at me with its huge Squeep!-like eyes, while its body zipped fluidly around the skyscrapers of the gigantic alien metropolis.
CHAPTER 26
THE IMPERIAL PLANET
I journeyed in my glass prison across a planetscape both wondrous and terrifying—though mostly terrifying.
The last alien world I visited had been cloaked in an unending nightmare of darkness. This one, at least by first comparison, looked like a bright, magnificent dream.
Its sky arched wider, bluer, and more brilliantly than our own.
The transport drifted like a bug through a forest of dazzling skyscrapers. Sculpted of gemlike materials, each one stood taller than any on Earth. Vertical gardens grew upon them like moss over tree trunks.
At first, I dared not look down from so high an altitude.
When I finally worked up the nerve, I saw the surrounding buildings drop toward a single, misty vanishing point—not even a glimpse of the ground.
My prison cylinder stood on a long hovering craft, guarded by military-police types. I avoided looking at my captors’ hideous faces. Instead, I concentrated on the scenery.
We passed fountains larger than Earth’s skyscrapers, floating spherical gardens, and wide pedestrian promenades where crowds began to form.
It might have been the most beautiful experience of my life, if not for the gathering mobs of monsters who wanted to kill me.
Every face in the multitude screamed hatred and murder.
I tried to tell myself that, since I was new to this culture, maybe their expressions and body language didn’t mean what I thought they meant. For all I knew, this was their way of giving a stranger a nice welcome.
As though to clear up any such confusion, the mob raised signs and banners with colorful drawings of me getting my head cut off and my guts ripped out. Others held up giant Happy Conklin Jr. effigies, which they then lit on fire and beat with sticks.
As sickening as this was to behold, I had to admit that these beings were pretty talented artists. Truly excellent paintings and sculptures can impress you even if you don’t necessarily agree with the point they’re making. And as draftsmen and artisans, these guys were simply phenomenal. I bet any one of them could have gotten hired at Disney.
Realizing that this technologically advanced, culturally sophisticated, diverse, and cosmopolitan civilization unanimously wanted me dead almost gave me a heart attack.
So I looked at the Ouroboros swimming eel-like through the skyscrapers. Its eyes looked so much friendlier than everyone else’s.
Do you know Squeep!? I thought, staring back.
It drifted closer.
Squeep! sometimes seemed capable of reading my mind. Maybe the Ouroboros could too?
Hey you, I thought as though it could hear me, I’m good friends with a reptile. An Earth lizard named Squeep! Do you know him? … He knows how to do that same trick where he becomes a portal by biting his tail … Did you teach him that?
It drifted closer and closer to our flying craft.
Can you help me? I thought. Please? Squeep! would want you to help me. We’re best friends …
The Ouroboros lifted its frontmost right arm.
It held something tiny in its enormous flipper. I squinted at the tiny speck. It was a kazoo! A green kazoo just like the one Squeep! had held up, only a whole lot bigger.
My captors grew angry at the creature for flying so close. They started screeching and bellowing and threatening it with their weapo
ns.
The Ouroboros turned away, like a rope through a pulley. It zigzagged off into the sky, where it faded into the blue brilliance.
Now my captors screeched and bellowed at me.
I couldn’t understand any of the barbaric garbling, but I knew threats when I heard them.
I tried to make the monsters less scary by giving them nicknames based on my favorite kinds of candy.
So this guy became “Gummy Bear.”
I named this one Nutrageous.
Unfortunately, the nicknaming trick didn’t work on the scariest of the creatures, the one standing across the deck from my cube staring coldly into the depths of my soul:
This guy so horrified me that thinking of him as “Jelly Belly” or “Twizzler” or “Jolly Rancher” only made it worse.
Though I didn’t know it yet, I had every reason to fear this individual above all others.
He was Star Chamberlain, Lord High Torturer of the entire Empire. He controlled a vast, finely tuned network of secret police, informants, torturers, prisons, dungeons, thugs, and murderers reaching across the hundred thousand planets of the Empire like a nervous system of fear and pain.
Luckily for the health of my pounding heart, I didn’t know any of this yet. Nor did I know that the black, castle-like skyscraper now swallowing our craft was his headquarters, the Ministry of Agreement.
As we docked, the hatch of my glass cell popped open, and I found I could still breathe.
Gummy Bear and Nutrageous pulled me out of my seat, manacled my wrists, shackled my ankles, and then chained the manacles to the shackles.
They confiscated my backpack and everything in my pockets, including Kayla’s note, which I guess I probably should have eaten or something.
Then Gummy Bear and Nutrageous marshaled me down an enormous white corridor.
After several minutes, we stopped, and Nutrageous pressed his clawed paw against the wall. A previously invisible door whooshed open, and they led me into a big white room.
There stood the largest creature I had encountered since the gigantic crystal monster who had carried me out of the Doorganizer.
But this one, I recognized.
It felt good to see a familiar face—even his.
“Gubbins!” I said.
“Ack. Hello, Happy Conklin,” said Ack Gubbins.
CHAPTER 27
THE PROTOCOL
Whooshing shut, the door vanished so completely into whiteness that I lost track of its location until Gummy Bear posted himself beside it.
Nutrageous unlocked and removed my chains. I figured he was the turnkey, responsible for doors and restraints, and Gummy was the muscle, in case I got out of line.
Ack smiled down at me, though I could tell he wasn’t happy.
His species had skin that changed colors involuntarily to reflect their innermost feelings, making them some of the worst liars in the universe. I knew from my time as a Gubbins that gray was the color of fear—the paler the gray, the deeper the terror.
Ack Gubbins looked nearly as white as the room.
“So, Ack,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Ack,” he replied.
“You said it, buddy. Ack is right.”
“Ack, Happy Conklin, ack, I am here to teach you, ack, the Imperial Protocol, ack. Please listen, ack, and …”
Though his voice and throat worked strenuously to articulate the human words, I had trouble understanding him.
I pointed to my ear.
“I’m not getting all of that,” I said. “And I don’t remember how to speak Gubbinsglopf. Why don’t you do what we did last time? Mirror my communication by using the Perfect-O-Specs?”
Ack slapped my mouth shut with his lower right hand.
“Ack, do not talk of evil, illegal devices,” he said. “Ack. All, ack, Conklin products have been banned, ack, throughout the universe. Ack, speak of them, ack, and you will be killed.”
I followed his eyes to Gummy, who had his claws on the hilt of some weapon at his belt.
“Don’t mention the products,” I said. “Got it.”
“Ack, good. Now, ack, you must learn the Imperial, ack, Protocol.”
“No!” I said. “I’m not learning any Imperial ack whatever-the-ack, until you tell me what’s going on! Why’d they bring me here? Am I under arrest? What are the charges? Who’s my lawyer? And it better not be you!”
Ack grew so scared that patches of his white skin flickered into transparency, revealing flashes of his innards that I still wish I’d never seen.
“Oh gross,” I said.
“Ack, Happy Conklin, ack,” he said. “You will soon be in the, ack, presence of the Emperor. You must not, ack, make any mistake of Imperial Protocol, ack. Or else … ACK!”
Ack made a cutting motion below his neck.
“They’ll cut my head off?” I said.
“No, ack,” he said. “My head.”
“What?” I said. “Wait, so if I mess up my curtsy or whatever to the Emperor, they’ll cut your head off?”
“Ack, yes,” he said. “Also please, please, please, ack, don’t curtsy, Happy Conklin.”
“Well, no wonder you’re so pale,” I said. “Okay, what’s the stupid protocol?”
Ack breathed a sigh of relief that turned him from translucent and white back to a pale gray.
I spent the next several hours memorizing every rule, sound, gesture, and action that Ack felt I might need to know to keep him alive.
The hardest move to master was called the Sublime Genuflection. Everyone had to do it the moment the Emperor or any member of his family entered the room. First you fell to your knees, then onto your face, then you made this half-gargling, half-yodeling noise until the Emperor grunted.
My first attempt at the gargle-yodel sounded so awful that Ack turned transparent again.
But as I practiced, his skin grew opaque and gradually less pale.
I could tell I had gotten good at it when I saw faint patches of orange appear on his belly.
Once he felt confident that I had learned the Sublime Genuflection, he began going over all the other rules.
I learned you must never look directly at the Emperor’s face or those of his family members. Also, never take a step in the Emperor’s direction, unless he instructs you to with a particular grunt and hand gesture. Then, you have to avert your eyes and make a full Sublime Genuflection between every single step you take as you approach him.
Every step? I thought. How did these weirdos ever manage to build an empire in the first place?
Soon Nutrageous returned with the manacles, shackles, and chains.
As he locked me up like Houdini, I thought about Squeep!, and wondered what he had been expecting me to do about all of this.
“Ack, please, Happy Conklin!” Ack cried weakly as they led me out. “Please, ack, remember to, ack …”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, before the door whooshed shut.
CHAPTER 28
IN THE DOCK
They marched me back down the white corridor, which I now realized was composed of opaque cells like the one I had left.
We halted at the threshold of a different sort of room, crowded with important-looking creatures in fancy garments.
It struck me as a cross between a royal court and a judicial one.
On the far right, an empty throne decked out in fancy regalia stood upon a raised altar. On the left side, at the front of the courtroom, an insectile, bug-eyed judge presided over things from a high desk.
At first, those assembled in the gallery seemed like refined, distinguished, aristocratic types. But the moment they saw me, they became as loud and unruly as the mob outside.
They jeered, howled, stomped, and banged on tables as guards marshaled me toward the bug-eyed judge, who barked at the crowd to come to order, presumably.
Gummy Bear led me to the dock, a rectangular enclosure to the lower right of the judge’s bench. Without undoing any of my restraints, Gummy stepp
ed behind me to my right.
Glancing back, I saw his claws on the hilt of the weapon at his belt.
As I started to wonder whether I’d be able to do a proper Sublime Genuflection in my manacles and shackles, a hornlike instrument blared several notes. Everyone in the room fell first to their knees, then onto their faces.
I did my best, despite the chains and restraints. What my Sublime Genuflection lacked in form, I more than made up for with my spirited yodel-gargling, which I thought was as good as anyone’s.
After an exhausting minute or so of this, the Emperor grunted, and we all rose back to our feet or foot-like appendages.
Though I never looked toward him, I couldn’t help getting some sense of the Emperor’s appearance out of the corner of my eye.
The Emperor was surprisingly small—maybe only a few inches taller than me. He was about fifty percent head, and his head was about forty percent nose. Unlike the statues of his ancestors on Easter Island, he was orange-colored.
After the bug-eyed judge’s opening remarks, a long thin creature stood up from a desk. He or she looked like a giant walking stick in a suit.
After bowing low toward the throne, Walking Stick began to stroll about the room and yammer.
Without understanding a word, I recognized Walking Stick right away as the district attorney type, a skilled politician with relatable body language and a manner of studied persuasiveness.
He or she directed everyone’s attention to a holographic orb in the center of the room as the lights began to dim.
The footage must have come from a camera attached to one of the cycloptic owls from the Doorganizer—a bird’s-eye view of me running across the junk pile yelling, “I surrender! I surrender!”
Good, I thought. Evidence of my cooperation should incline the court toward leniency.
Next the orb showed footage from the Wrastlinsanity match, where Grandma and I had fought as a tag team against Florida Pete. Walking Stick yammered over close-ups of Grandma and me shaking hands, and then repeated close-ups of us tagging each other during the match.