“Goodbye, Luke, Lara and Serge. It was lovely meeting you all. And remember, we are all the heroes of our own stories.”
He smiled at us and we waved back.
“He’s a bit strange,” I muttered to the others. “Probably all that time spent alone in a room talking to imaginary people.”
We left the gym and made our way along the corridor to our next class. Know the ending, Arthur had advised. Useless. I was writing down real life, so there was no way of knowing. But at that moment, not in my wildest imagination, could I have pictured how my own story would end.
It was later that same day and I was at Dad’s comic shop on the High Street, waiting for him to close up so we could go home together. I wanted to get to the tree house to prepare for the S.C.A.R.F. meeting that evening, but in the meantime I had settled myself behind the till with a Thor-themed pad and a pencil with a Mjolnir hammer rubber on the end, in order to write down more of our recent adventures. I’d already written tons, filling eight pages of narrow-lined A4. Both sides. As I put the finishing touches to the latest section I wondered what our next adventure would be, and then I got this sick feeling in my stomach as it hit me – there might not be another one if Zack gave up his superpowers. Without Star Lad, there could be no S.C.A.R.F. (As much as Dark Flutter was a superhero, Star Lad was the heart of the team.) Couldn’t Zack see how selfish he was being? I didn’t want our adventures to end. Once again I bitterly reflected that I would have made a much more committed superhero than my brother. And for the trillionth time I asked myself why hadn’t Zorbon decided on me, not Zack? Yes, I’d had to nip out of the tree house for a wee and so missed his arrival, but surely the all-knowing alien could’ve timed his visit a bit better. Of all the decisions Zorbon the Decider had made, I’d never understand that one.
My thoughts were interrupted as the shop window began to rattle and from outside came the distinctive whir of rotor-blades. It sounded as if a helicopter was landing in the High Street. Dad hurried out and I followed him to find, to my astonishment, not a helicopter, but a drone hovering above the pavement. With a black metal body two metres wide and six spindly legs it looked like a giant mechanical flying insect. Slung beneath it in a harness was a cardboard box. The drone and the box sported the same logo: an illustration of a space rocket belching flames underlined with the name “Rocketship.com”. As I watched in amazement, a red light beamed from the drone, illuminating Dad, slowly moving down from the top of his head, following the contours of his face.
“Customer identification in progress,” the drone droned.
The light blinked off. Dad’s identity confirmed, the drone lowered the box into his hands.
“Congratulations. Your order has been Rocket-shipped,” declared the drone and, having delivered the package, its rotor-blades spun faster, lifting it into the sky and it buzzed off along the street, back to wherever it had come from.
I wasn’t sure what I’d just witnessed. “Did you just get a delivery from a hundred years in the future?”
Dad rolled his eyes. “Rocketship.com are trialling drone deliveries in Bromley.” He grinned. “I’m an early adopter.”
Dad wasn’t a superhero, but like Superman he had his kryptonite. In his case it was an online shopping site called Rocketship.com. I trailed behind him as he carried the box inside.
“They’ve just opened an autonomous warehouse on the edge of town,” he went on excitedly. “One hour local delivery, and your order is free if you suffer any rotor-blade-related injury.” He set the box down on the counter.
“What does autonomous mean?” I asked.
“In this case it means all the orders and deliveries are dealt with by computers and robots. No humans in the way to mess things up.” He opened up the box and discarded clouds of bubble wrap around what I now saw to be—
“A toaster?”
“Ah-ha, yes,” he said, lifting it out. “But not just any toaster.”
It was a chrome-plated, four-slice toaster – seemed like any toaster to me. The only slightly unusual things about it were two red dials on the casing and an oblong digital display beneath them which, if you squinted, gave the impression of eyes and a mouth. Dad uncoiled the flex and plugged it in to the nearest socket.
He cleared his throat and said in a deliberate voice, “OK, toaster.”
Just when I was thinking that he’d lost his mind, the red dials pulsed and a wavy line flickered across the display.
“Hello, Nigel,” said an expressionless male voice that sounded as if it had just woken from a nap. “Time for a delicious slice of toast?”
“See!” said Dad, clearly impressed by his new purchase.
“But your name’s not Nigel.”
“That’s hardly the point, Luke.” He snatched up the instruction booklet, muttering. “And I’m sure it’s simple enough to change.” He gazed lovingly at his new toy. “It’s part of a new range of domestic appliances. The toaster is the hub. With it I can control every device in our home.”
Thanks to Dad’s Rocketship.com spending spree, our house had become the Home of the Future. You couldn’t go to the toilet without first having to ask some machine to lift the lid for you. Thankfully, his obsession hadn’t yet spilled over to the shop. Mostly because he was too busy dealing with real flesh-and-blood customers to have time to install talking toilets. Dad put aside the toaster as a gaggle of excited customers entered. Our shop, “Parker & Sons”, had become super-popular ever since my Evil Twin (and anguished supervillain), Stellar, had proclaimed it the only place to buy your comics in this universe. The public were suckers for a celebrity endorsement. As a result, business was sonic-booming. One outcome of all this success was that it enabled Dad to waste money on Rocketship.com. The other consequence was that he had taken on weekend staff and a deputy manager.
This is where it got a bit weird.
“Chris,” Dad called across the shop. “Can you check in the back for another Infinity Gauntlet?” Dad held up the large gem-studded golden glove that one of the newly arrived customers wanted to buy. “Gems on this one won’t light up.”
“Will do, boss,” came the answer from behind a bookshelf. A second later there was a noise like a body being dragged across the floor, and then a figure sloped into view. At the till the customers spotted him and recoiled in fright. It was the usual response, one I’d witnessed a lot.
The figure wore a black, floor-length cape with a cowl that cast a shadow across his features. But even half concealed, he was a scary sight. He was a cyborg – part man, part machine. The machine in question being a TV remote control. Following an explosion on an alien mothership (it’s a long story) the remote control had melded with his body so that one eye was a large silver button with “OK” in its centre, his left cheek was a numbered keypad, and in place of his right hand was an oblong black plastic case with a single red power button. He ignored the customers’ terrified faces and hauled himself past them to the back of the shop.
The cyborg’s name was Christopher Talbot. And he and I had history. Not the heal-the-world-invention-of-penicillin kind of history, more the sneak-attack-missile-crisis variety. Talbot had once been a regular comic-book-store owner, but then he’d used all his savings to build a superpower-sucking machine, with which he’d attempted to take Zack’s powers for himself. That ended badly for him. Sometime later he’d redeemed himself for his dastardly ambitions by helping to thwart an alien invasion. We thought that he had sacrificed himself in the process, but it turned out he had survived. Though not without significant personal cost.
I watched him shamble towards the stock room, dragging his injured leg. This used to be his shop, so when he’d reappeared on the scene clutching the application for the position of deputy manager, my dad had felt sorry for him and offered him the job. To my surprise, Talbot had taken it and in the short time since then – even more surprisingly – he hadn’t attempted to take over the world. I was suspicious from the start.
“Look at it f
rom my point of view,” I said as Talbot filled a jar next to the till with superhero badges. It was early one Saturday morning and he and I had been left alone at the till while Dad was in the stock room. “You disappear into thin air aboard an alien spaceship, which you claim explodes shortly after, and in the blast you become fused together with a TV remote. Next thing I know you’re back here looking like a cross between Darth Vader and Deathlok.”
His OK-button eye blinked. “During the destruction of the mothership my body merged with several TV remote controls.” His voice, like his appearance, had altered since our previous encounter. It had acquired a rasp, as if his tongue was made of metal. “The remotes saved my life. I believe they put me into a sort of stasis – stand-by, if you like – reducing my body’s need for oxygen, allowing me to survive in the vacuum of space. I have no idea for how long I floated. But eventually I was picked up by a Cerebran spaceship.”
The evil brain-in-a-jar we’d encountered at Great Minds Leisure Park was a Cerebran.
“They nursed me back to health and sent me as their emissary to Earth. That, of course, is when you and I were reunited.” He held a Black Lightning badge between the fingers of his human hand, before dropping it into the jar. It clinked against the others.
His story made sense chronologically, but it’s fair to say that I didn’t trust his version of events. True, the first thing he had done on his return was to deliver the antidote that enabled Serge and Lara to return to their own bodies, but Talbot had form as a supervillain, and – thanks to a run-in with a giant asteroid – he possessed an electric-eel-like power that allowed him to fire a blast of energy from his fingertips. It was quite cool, although it required a lengthy charging period between uses. I was also spooked by his outfit. I knew I shouldn’t be, but the black cowl and cyborg eye weren’t doing much to inspire gooey feelings of friendship. I was unwilling to let him off the hook so easily.
“And the remote controls that became part of your body,” I had quizzed him. “You sure they don’t give you some new special power?”
He had raised the plastic oblong casing with the on/off button that replaced his right hand. “Only if you call never having to hunt for the TV remote a superpower.”
That conversation had been several months ago. Since then, to his credit, Talbot had slipped effortlessly into the role of deputy manager. He was the one who’d suggested turning the basement into “The Fortress of Snackitude”. It was a café, open from early in the morning until closing time. There was a range of breakfast items, including Iron Bran and the Incredible Milk; lunch consisted of a choice between a healthy option Souperman Special with a half-Scarletwich, or a Slider-Man burger and a side of Hawk-fries. (He had quietly dropped the third option, the Human Borscht, following a lack of demand.) Talbot had also revamped the shop website, streamlined the computer ordering system, upgraded the antivirus software to a subscription service. In every way he had proved himself an asset to the shop, and Dad only refrained from referring to him as his “right-hand man” out of sensitivity to his condition. Dad had no clue about Talbot’s dark past. As far as he was concerned, his employee’s odd appearance was the result of an industrial accident and a fondness for supervillain cosplay, neither of which was a barrier in his current choice of career. Part of me wanted to warn my dad, but another part wanted to give Talbot a chance. I decided to hold off saying anything until the moment he gave me cause for concern.
Dad nudged me. “Go to the stock room and help Chris look for that gauntlet, will you?”
“Do I have to?”
Dad winced. “He doesn’t see so well with the, y’know, OK-button eye.”
“Fine,” I sighed, and slouched off.
Shadows seesawed across the floor of the stock room, cast by a solitary lightbulb swinging from a short flex. I figured Talbot must have knocked the bulb when he entered, and in the disorientating light I struggled to see him.
Dad had gone a bit nuts buying stuff for the shop, so the place was packed with boxes, stacked to the ceiling. This was also where he hid some of his less successful Rocketship.com purchases from Mum. Notable items included a smart hairbrush that told you when to get a haircut; vacuum-cleaner roller-skates; and a washer-dryer combo that promised to clean everything in half the time, but which didn’t mention that it also shrank everything to half its size. Mum had made Dad promise to return all of these purchases, but so far he’d not quite got round to doing so. I had a feeling that the talking toaster would soon find a home here alongside the rest of the half-baked devices.
I finally discovered Talbot hunched over an open carton, rummaging through its contents. He had his back to me, but as I approached he straightened, as if sensing my presence.
“Luke,” he said, spinning round, clutching a boxfresh Infinity Gauntlet. “How was school today?”
I knew he was trying to be friendly, but it was like having a Dalek ask if I’d care for a Tic Tac.
“Fine,” I replied. “We had an author visit.”
“How interesting,” he mused. “I’ve always believed that books can change your life. You just need to find the right one.”
He glanced at a shrink-wrapped pile of books on the floor. The shop stocked a wide selection of graphic novels, and movie and TV tie-in novels, but the superhero on the cover of this one was not a character I recognised.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“The right book,” said Talbot, slipping the Infinity Gauntlet over his TV remote hand and using one finger to slice open the film. “I predict that this is about to become our biggest-selling item.” With his other hand he plucked off the top copy and held it out to me.
The lightbulb had finally stopped swinging. Now its pale glow steadily illuminated the cover. The title, picked out in gold lettering, read: Star Power and the Revenge of the Plasmatrons. I’d never heard of it. My eye fell on the name of the author.
“Billy Dark?!” Incredulous, I struggled to get my head round this development. “But he’s a pop singer.”
Talbot smiled. “And now a bestselling children’s author.”
Talbot wore the Infinity Gauntlet over his TV remote hand and held the copy of Billy Dark’s novel in the other. Looking back now, little did I appreciate how close I was standing to one of the most dangerous weapons in the universe – and a toy glove.
It was later that evening and Mum, Dad, Zack and I were in the kitchen eating dinner, when I finally learned Zack’s other terrible news. Bowls of pasta steamed gently on the table in front of us. I stared at him through the spaghetti mist, but he ignored me, refusing to lift his head from his bolognese. He was avoiding me, which he had been doing since his announcement that he was giving up his powers. Lots of superheroes in comics at some point in their careers try to rid themselves of their powers. Sometimes they’re too sad to go on because they failed to save their true love; or their actions accidentally led to the destruction of an entire pocket universe and the deaths of trillions of beings; but mostly they throw in the cape for a far more mundane reason – what I call the “double-life gambit”. Which is to say that they abandon their amazing powers so they can be like every other ordinary person on the planet. Crazy, I know. However, I reckoned I could talk Zack round. All I needed to do was get him in the tree house. Faced with Lara, Serge and my heartfelt words, he would back down. I was convinced of it.
“I’ll put on the oven for the pie,” said Mum. She began to get up from the table, but Dad pressed her gently back into her seat.
“Allow me,” he said, clearing his throat and calling across the room. “OK, toaster.”
On the kitchen counter the device woke up, red dials pulsing, a wavy line swooping across its display as it acknowledged his voice. “Hello, Nigel.”
“Nigel?” queried Mum.
“Just needs an update,” Dad mumbled, and then in a clearer voice said, “Switch on oven. One hundred and eighty degrees.”
All of us turned our attention to the oven. Nothing happened. Da
d clicked his fingers. “Wait, I forgot.” He cleared his throat and then barked, “OFEN EINSCHALTEN. EINHUNDERT ACHTZIG GRAD CELSIUS!”
There was a click and a whir as the fan oven sprang to life.
“So it only works if you shout at it in German?” said Mum.
Dad offered her a sheepish look. “Just needs an update.” His expression brightened. “Until then, Luke can practise his foreign-language skills.”
“But I’m not taking German.”
Dad waved at me to be quiet.
Mum sighed and then turned to me. “As delighted as I am to see you reading a book, please put it away. We’re eating.”
Billy Dark’s superhero novel sat beside me on the table. I carried it to the dresser and set it down next to a large white envelope, which I noticed was addressed to Zack. As I did so, the novel passed under Zack’s nose and for the first time that evening he looked up.
“Billy Dark’s written a book?”
“Yeah, Chris ordered a bunch of them for the shop,” said Dad. “He says Billy Dark’s the next big thing in children’s fiction. Reckons this book’s going to take over the world.”
Zack gave a dismissive snort. “I doubt it.”
His sneering tone got my back up. I’d barely read a chapter of Star Power and the Revenge of the Plasmatrons and, to be honest, it didn’t seem world-shattering to me, either. I didn’t really care about Billy Dark, but I was totally fed up with my big brother.
“Maybe Billy Dark’s always secretly wanted to write children’s books,” I said. “Maybe all the time he’s been filling stadiums singing pop songs to thousands of people he’s been thinking: this just isn’t me. Maybe one day a powerful being visited him in his recording studio and bestowed him with the ability to write amazing children’s books and he realised that it was a privilege and not something to be chucked away after a few years when he didn’t feel like being an author any more.”
My Cousin is a Time Traveller Page 2