How to Save the Universe Without Really Trying

by John Cusick

  Gabby glared at her and sighed. “Yes.”

  Lola tromped over, her sneakers and jeans caked in meteorite dust.

  “Don’t try anything funny,” Gabby said as Lola reached for the charm. She pointed the double barrel of the destabilizer at Lola’s chest.

  “I thought you needed me alive.”

  “I can do a lot of damage without killing you,” Gabby snarled.

  The charm had little clasps, or rather, switches, on both sides. Lola pressed them, and when she did, the girl standing before her shimmered like a mirage and was replaced by a very similar-looking person, except slightly taller, with skin the texture—and hue—of lime Jell-O.

  “Who—” Lola started.

  “My name is Gretta,” said Gretta, “director of the Temporal Transit Authority. And you, time traveler, are my prisoner.”

  The green woman standing before Lola fished in the pocket of her now too-tight SunStar uniform and produced a pair of very stylish glasses. She put them on. Then she fished in another pocket and produced a small handheld communicator.

  “Mr. Bolus,” she said into the receiver, “I have the target.”

  “Well done, Gretta!” came a spidery little voice through the device’s speaker. “Identify your location and we’ll come pick you up.”

  Gretta tapped some buttons on the surface of the communicator with her thumb. A readout appeared on the screen.

  “We are located in the Alpha Centauri System,” Gretta said into the communicator, “near Proxima Centauri space, on an asteroid called Satellite B. We’re near something called the, uh . . . it says we’re near something called the North Entrance.”

  “Excellent,” said the voice of Goro Bolus. “A transport will be there to collect you shortly.”

  “And that,” said Gretta with a smug little smile, “is that.”

  Back on the SS SunStar, Phin was almost—but not quite—totally panicking.

  “This is mission control, we have received your automated distress signal,” a voice over the radio was saying. “Please confirm your Vessel ID number so we may dispatch a rescue team.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” shouted Phin, struggling to free his hands from the guidance controls. “I don’t actually know my Vessel ID number?” There was a small communicator button on his cuff link, if he could just get his face close enough . . .

  “Vessel, you must confirm your Vessel ID number,” the voice continued. “Would you like to speak to someone in customer assistance?”

  “Wow, I super wouldn’t,” said Phin, trying to activate his cuff-link communicator with his nose, which would have looked very strange to anyone watching, which no one was.

  “Vessel, this channel is for command communication only,” the radio demanded. “If you are not a rank of captain or higher, you must clear this channel.”

  “Look, just forget it,” said Phin, bracing one foot against the console and trying to yank himself free. “I’m kind of busy dying right now.”

  With one final yank, Phin’s cuffs broke free from the panel. Or rather, a bit of the panel broke free from the rest of the panel, sending Phin hurtling backward into the captain’s chair. Gasping, with not a moment to lose, Phin pressed his nose to the communicator node on his pearled right cuff link.

  Somewhere in the ship, many decks below, something began to rumble.

  “Sir,” the radio said with a note of impatience, “if you are not the captain of the SS SunStar, you are in violation of Galactic Telecom Code SH-420 and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

  “Welp,” said Phin, “just, you know, add that to the list.”

  The rumbling was getting louder. Not, it should be noted, the rumbling of the crashing ship itself, which was also getting louder, but something else. Something was rumbling and smashing, and it was getting closer.

  “Vessel, Sun-Liner security forces are converging on your position,” said the radio.

  “Excellent!” said Phin. “They’ll probably find a lot of panicky passengers standing on an asteroid called Satellite B, very near my position. Could you pick those guys up? Thanks a million!”

  Phin got to his feet. He listened. It was hard to isolate one kind of rumbling from all the rest, but he did it. And not a second too soon. Phin looked left, then jumped right, just as an enormous steamer trunk with leather siding and the letters VRW stamped on the side in a repeating pattern smashed through the floor. For a moment the trunk hung in the air like a breaching whale, before crashing to the deck, turning in a circle, and popping open its lid.

  “About time!” Phin shouted, and dived headfirst into his luggage.

  What happened next is difficult to put into words.

  The trunk began to shimmer. It began to vibrate. Its surface seemed to ripple and bend. It wobbled, pulsed, and changed in a manner that can only be described as a large steamer trunk transforming into a significantly larger and less-expensive-looking Volvo Rescue Wagon.

  Decloaking, the Rescue Wagon smashed its way through what remained of the bridge. Its roof clonked off the ceiling, its wheels skidded over the deck. Fishtailing through one wall and reversing through another, the vessel righted itself, unrighted itself, picked a direction at random, and blasted off through the hull of the SunStar and out into the black of space.

  Through the windshield, Phin saw a tumbling kaleidoscope of stars as the Wagon spun through the void. He flailed, hands still bound together, now with a bit of the SunStar’s control panel stuck to them, as the steering wheel spun freely.

  “Hooo boy!” called Bucky. “All that bouncing around seems to have damaged our rear thrusters. We’re flying blinder than a one-eyed rattler with an eye patch. We’re spinning faster than a bobcat in a tumble dryer. We’re—”

  “Out of control, I get it,” said Phin. “Bucky, reroute all power to automated guidance.”

  “Ten-four, good buddy!” said Bucky.

  Phin turned to greet the stuffed bear in the back seat. “Hey, Teddy. No need to say anything. It’s good to see you too.”

  “Let’s play a game!” said Teddy.

  “Let’s save the day first,” said Phin.

  His hands still bound, Phin cleared his throat.

  “Turn us around, Bucky. We’re headed to the asteroid known as Satellite B. North Entrance.”

  “Can do, little doggies!”

  And with that, the small Wagon did an elegant backflip, peeled away from the doomed star liner as it erupted in flames, and rocketed, spectacularly, to the rescue.

  Part 4

  The Triumvirate of Pong

  27

  IT WAS A VERY large, very dark, and very damp space. The air was hot and thick, and to stand within it was to know you were not alone.

  Something immense lived here. Something as ancient as it was intelligent.

  It was a creature born from pure energy, the agitation of particles slowly manipulated and gathered together over centuries. It was a being created by entities from another world, and it had been waiting with inhuman patience for this day.

  With a voice that echoed through one’s temporal lobes, the enormous creature, which spoke without lips, without a face, without a voice at all, said:

  “The wizard draws near, as does the Child of Space and the Child of Time. The hour will soon be upon us, my wise companion. The time of the Great Unraveling, when the Triumvirate of Pong will make its final sacrifice, and the question that has echoed across the dimensions will finally be asked.”

  “Excellent,” said the much smaller entity in the large, dark, damp space. It patted its little paws together in eager anticipation. “Then I shall put the kettle on.”

  28

  “DO YOU EVER GET the feeling,” said Lola, “that you’re being watched?”

  “You are being watched,” said Gretta, “by me.”

  They were seated on a pair of rocky outcroppings, facing each other. Lola sat with her head in her hands, elbows on her knees. She kicked at a pebble and watched it tumble
through the dust. Gretta was more upright, keeping the destabilizer trained on her prisoner. She seemed a bit jumpy. This was in part due to where they were sitting—the spooky, dead wastes of an asteroid.

  “You’re shaking,” said Lola.

  Gretta had been squinting at Lola’s T-shirt and trying to make out the design underneath the layers of dust and space grime, but at this comment her head snapped up.

  “No, I’m not,” Gretta snarled. “I mean, my hand’s just tired.”

  She switched the destabilizer to her other hand. It did not shake. Gretta smirked. “See?”

  “Anyway,” sighed Lola, looking for another pebble to kick. “Do you know what I mean? About being watched? I feel,” said Lola, “like someone . . . or something . . . is watching us.”

  Gretta growled. She actually growled. “Stop it. You’re just trying to distract me.”

  Lola put her hands up in defense. “Really, I’m not. It’s just . . . don’t you feel it? It’s like we’re not alone here. That’s all.”

  “Hmph,” said Gretta. Then, after a long pause, “Yes, it does feel that way.”

  The pair lapsed into a tense silence. Wind howled across the plains. It dipped and tumbled through the craggy mountains to the west. It skittered in the dust around them.

  Then, something else skittered.

  “What was that?” said Gretta, whirling her gun on a group of boulders to the west.

  “It was the wind,” said Lola. “Like, skittering.”

  Gretta was on her feet. “That wasn’t the wind.”

  In truth, Lola had been mostly trying to unnerve her captor, but now, ears straining, she heard it too. It was a sound like the scuffle of feet, or the twitching of tiny, inhuman jaws. A clackity, clinkity, altogether hair-raising sound.

  “Do you see something over there?” Gretta asked, her voice thick.

  The asteroid had begun to turn away from its neighboring star, and in the devilish twilight, the shadows grew longer, stretching at mad angles from the cliffs and rocky spires. And in those shadows, specifically in the shadows near the boulders off to the west, it looked like something was moving.

  Or lots of little somethings.

  “It’s, uh, your imagination,” said Lola. Then added, “So would you please ask it to stop?”

  “There’s something behind those boulders,” hissed Gretta. Keeping the destabilizer trained on the shadows, she looked around with a kind of twitchy franticness. With her free hand she wiped her brow. “I don’t like it here,” she said, almost to herself. “There’s something—”

  The skittering suddenly stopped. And like a refrigerator fan or a neighbor’s television, the moment the sound was gone was the moment both girls knew with absolute certainty it had been there a moment ago. Its absence filled their ears like cotton. And then, just in case the goose bumps on their necks and arms were thinking about calling it a day, something new appeared in the shadows.

  It was eight sets of tiny glowing eyes.

  “Very slowly,” said Gretta. “Let’s back away very sl—”

  She turned and saw Lola had already bolted halfway to the next canyon.

  “Oh, a black hole ain’t no place for a cowboy!” Bucky was singing. “His spurs won’t jingle-jangle in the void! When his best girl Betty turns to superstring spaghetti, you bet that all the cows’ll be annoyed!”

  “That’s great, Bucky,” said Phin. It didn’t take a highly sophisticated user interface to detect his sarcasm. Bucky, however, seemed unfazed.

  “Verse fourteen!” sang the computer. “Oh, a black hole ain’t no place for a rustler! A feller’s got to stay home on the range! And did I forget to mention, when you’re stuck in another dimension, all yer chaps and boots fit kinda strange!”

  “Stop,” said Phin, as clearly as he could, “singing.”

  “Verse fifteen!” called Bucky.

  The Rescue Wagon was making its way toward the asteroid. Though the immediate threat of immolation had passed, the little vessel’s escape from the hull of the SunStar had left it badly damaged, and it hobbled its way across the expanses like a wounded bird, flopping and dipping and weaving toward the planetoid below. There was also something seriously wrong with Bucky. Battering around the SunStar’s bridge had knocked something loose in his mainframe, Phin figured, hence the more-annoying-than-usual behavior. Hence the singing. Under normal circumstances Phin would have simply covered his ears, but currently his wrists were bound together at the cellular level.

  “And now a brief interlude in the music,” said Bucky between verses fifteen and sixteen of “A Black Hole Ain’t No Place for a Cowboy”—“to let you know we’ll be touching down on the asteroid’s surface in three point two minutes, which is just enough time to run through the chorus again!”

  “Bucky,” said Phin, “I’m going to delete you when this is over.”

  “Black hooooole! Black hooooole! You ate my hat but you won’t eat my soul! Black hooooole! Black hooooole! Please give me back my cow, she is my frieeeend!”

  29

  LOLA DID NOT BOTHER to check if Gretta was following, on the off chance she might see the things with the glowing eyes—whatever they were—following them. Lola’s sight was locked firmly on the terrain ahead, unwavering to the left or right, laser-focused. As long as she kept looking forward at the mile-or-so stretch of open plain, nothing, she assumed, would get the better of her.

  Which is why she was so surprised when she ran face-first into the cathedral.

  Lola toppled back, arms flailing, and came down hard in the dust. She sputtered. Her nose throbbed. Her brain did a double take. Slowly, with aching joints and wincing synapses, she raised her head to look at what she had bumped into, which had, she was certain, been completely invisible until the moment she’d bumped into it. Lola was certain it had been invisible, because an enormous gothic cathedral in the middle of a barren asteroid plain is a tricky thing to miss.

  It was enormous.

  The structure that loomed before her, casting its now visible shadow across the plain, was easily twice the size of Saint Patrick’s in New York, three times the size of the Great Temple of Rock on the Planet Heavy Metal, and larger still than the MegaChurch of Thron’s gift shop and cafeteria—rumored to be the largest emporium of affordable spiritual artifacts and ecclesiastical snacks in the galaxy.

  The cathedral jutted from the earth like a fang. Its tower came to a sharp point hundreds of feet above where Lola now sprawled. It was stone, polished smooth by alien hands and lovingly—or at least exhaustively—hewn with carvings and gothic embellishments. Gargoyles peered from the eaves, their frozen features snarling or slobbering at the world below. And in places, figures one could only assume were angels reached up into the sky above Satellite B, their wings unfolded, their uniforms bunchy and ill fitting.

  Lola sat up and made a fish face at it.

  “Where did that come from?” she said. “And also, ow.” She rubbed her aching nose.

  Gretta had come to a hobbling, stuttering halt a few paces away, and now craned her neck back and back to take in the alarming structure.

  “It’s . . . it’s . . . ,” she said, very much as if she knew how to finish her sentence, which she didn’t.

  “It’s a cathedral,” said Lola, getting to her feet and dusting herself off—the little glowing-eyed creatures, at least for the moment, forgotten. “I mean, it looks like a church. What’s that say over the door?”

  There was a massive arch, housing double doors of stone. Above it were words in a language Lola didn’t recognize or understand.

  “It says,” said Gretta, her voice soft with wonder, “North Entrance.”

  A thrill of recognition rushed up Lola’s spine. This could only be the North Entrance from their invitation to tea. But she certainly wasn’t going to mention that, or the Triumvirate of Pong, to Gretta.

  Gretta meanwhile peered hazily at some of the detail higher up on the central spire. “Those . . . angels,” she said. “Th
ey almost look like . . .”

  “Look!” said Lola, and pointed not at the cathedral, but at the way from which they’d come. There, at the edge of the plain, dust was beginning to billow. Something like a thundercloud was rolling toward them at a high speed, and whether it was a kind of sandstorm or the result of thousands of little alien feet beating after them in pursuit, Lola didn’t care to find out.

  “Come on,” she said, grabbing Gretta’s sleeve. The presence of danger and the appearance of the cathedral had brought them into a kind of uneasy truce. She ought to just leave Gretta to fend for herself, Lola thought. Instead, she used this moment of distraction to grab Gretta’s destabilizer and hurl it into a gloomy crevasse.

  “Hey!” said Gretta.

  “Is for horses!” Lola shouted back, one of those annoying little sayings she’d picked up from her mother and couldn’t seem to avoid saying no matter what the circumstance. “Come on!”

  She yanked Gretta up the stone steps, under the archway, and to the stone doors, which refused to budge when Lola threw herself against them. Both girls now shoved the mighty barrier, but to no avail.

  “Frizhadellus-Corpoilius,” said Gretta.

  “Is that some kind of password?”

  “No. It’s a very rude word.”

  “Oh,” said Lola.

  They looked out across the plain to where the dust cloud was rapidly approaching.

  “Let’s try again,” said Gretta. “Put your shoulder into it.”

  “I did,” said Lola, rubbing her sore arm. They tried again. They tried a fourth and fifth time, until both were panting and sore.

  “What’s crunching?” panted Gretta.

  “What?”

  “Something in your pocket,” said Gretta, “made a crunching sound.”

  Before she could stop her, Gretta slipped her long green fingers into Lola’s pocket and pulled out the small lavender invitation.

  “Hey, that’s mine!”

  “You are cordially invited to tea,” Gretta read aloud. “North Entrance. But that’s where we are,” said Gretta. “You knew?”