How to Save the Universe Without Really Trying

by John Cusick

  (There is also a theory that very cute spaceships, especially adorably tiny ones, can, under the right conditions, travel at speeds faster even than those provided by hypergates. But this theory has also yet to be conclusively proven.)

  Professor Donut was one of the leading experts in the cute sciences and had the laboratory to prove it. Lola found herself in a large cylindrical room, much like the base of a silo. The walls were polished aluminum, lined with storage bins labeled googly eyes, pom-poms, and neutrinos. The floor was cluttered with large machinery. Cannon-like ray guns on heavy bases, blinking computer bays, and everywhere a hopeless tangle of wires, ductwork, copper piping, and clumps of orange fur.

  In the center was a large dais, ringed with lights that illuminated in a circular pulse, suggesting great, thrumming energy. This platform was clearly meant to power and elevate whatever stood upon it. The entire room, in fact, seemed designed to draw one’s eyes to a single revered object, the object Lola knew without asking was the crowning achievement of Professor Donut’s career.

  On the dais, connected to a series of wires and intricate sensors, was the cutest set of fuzzy pajamas Lola had ever seen. It was a onesie, complete with footies and a butt flap, and a little hood with round teddy bear ears sewn on. The fabric was a warm and cuddly cotton, pink and decorated in smiling moons and stars. Over the belly was a cozy kangaroo pocket, perfect for keeping your hands warm while you snuggled in front of the television or drifted off to sleep in an equally cozy bed.

  “Am I supposed to get in that?” said Lola. If one were going to travel back in time, doing so in a comfy, cute onesie didn’t seem so bad. Assuming no one saw you in it.

  “Not precisely,” said Professor Donut. “You’re going to get in the pocket.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Lola. “I thought you said you were sending me home?”

  “I most certainly am,” said Professor Donut, beaming with pride. “Lola, these machines harness the power of cuteness. With them, I have created my own tiny universe. A pocket universe, identical to our own in every way.” He took her hand and led her closer to the dais and its pulsing lights. Lola could feel its power, like a buzz in her back teeth. “I have grown my pocket universe, nurtured it from its adorable little big bang through to what you would call the present day. And there I have held it for you, on a September afternoon in the year 2018. Now, with this ray,” Professor Donut said, indicating a cannon-sized machine with a tapering barrel and blinking node at one end, “I will shrink you down and transport you inside this pocket universe, where you may resume your life just as it was the moment you left it. Your parents will be there. Your family.” Professor Donut beamed with pride and wise compassion. “Everything will be just as it was.”

  “But,” said Lola. “But it’s not my actual home, then. I mean”—she stared at the strange fuzzy suit and its network of cabling—“it’s just a . . . pretend version.”

  “It is a bit,” said Professor Donut. He hesitated. “However . . . pretend has its benefits. If you like I can make . . . adjustments.”

  “Adjustments?”

  Professor Donut swept his paw over the room. “This pocket universe is yours, Lola. It was made for you. And if you wish, I can change it. You could look different. You could be a superhero. If you choose, I can bend the very laws of physics to fit your needs. You can go home, and you can go to any version of home you desire.”

  Lola let this sink in. Any life she wished. She pictured a world where her father never left. Where her mother was more certain, her sisters more appreciative, where there were no late-night phone calls heard through bedroom walls, no tears and trembling voices. Maybe even a world without war, or sickness, or fear. Her imagination pushed further than she wished it to: a world where maybe, just maybe, it was just her and her parents. Where there were no sisters at all. No, that was a terrible thought. But still . . . if it was all pretend . . .

  “Once you enter the pocket universe, the Phan will never find you. You will be beyond their reach, indeed beyond the reach of any danger at all.” Professor Donut tried a sad smile. He was proud of his work and surprised at the Earth girl’s reluctance. “Aren’t you pleased?”

  “I . . . ,” said Lola. “Are you . . . are you certain there’s no way for me to get back to my real home?”

  “I . . . cannot say,” said Professor Donut, trying to hide his disappointment. “But I do know that no one has yet perfected time travel. This,” he said, placing a paw on the control panel, “is the closest thing you will ever find.”

  Lola considered the choice before her, the opportunity to have everything she ever wanted, tucked safely forever in the pocket of a onesie. Safe. So insanely safe.

  “I need a moment to think,” she said, and before the professor could answer, she left the room.

  The tunnels and chambers winding through the shell of Satellite B were complex and ancient, filled with blind falls and dead ends. Phin had stomped aggressively through most of them, not caring where he went, cursing when he nearly fell into a bottomless pit or smashed his nose on one of the many hard, wet walls that seemed to jump out at him in the low light. He didn’t care that he was lost or that the way was dangerous. He was throwing an epic tantrum, and it felt good. He barked and screamed in his solitude, raged and cried and laughed madly to himself. A stranger coming upon him in this state would have certainly thought he was a raving lunatic, and that was all right with Phin. He wanted the world to cower. He wanted everyone to see just how mad he was.

  But there was no one around to see it.

  He came at last to a set of doors. These were steel rather than stone, and large enough for heavy equipment and machinery to pass through. There was even a steel track running along the ceiling, suggesting to Phin these doors led to some kind of workshop or garage. A closer examination revealed a sign that read Workshop/Garage: Keep Out!

  “We’ll see about that,” Phin growled, and went right the heck in.

  Every kid of every species needs a place to be alone. A special place, whether it be their room, a tree house, or a hidden corner of the attic. Every kid needs a place to go and think and be away from the maddening world of adults. You can usually tell when you’ve found such a place. They tend to be exquisitely messy and filled with half-finished bags of potato chips. The walls tend to be covered in posters or drawings, and always, in such secret places, a special, private project will be lying half complete. Such rooms, clubhouses, and hideaways have their own kind of magic, and Phin knew he’d just found one.

  “Moop,” said one of the mushroom people gathered in the center of the workshop, and it waved.

  “Moop,” said all the rest, and they waved as well.

  “Hey,” said Phin. “Mind if I come in?”

  The shop, much like Phin’s bedroom back home, was a mess. A food replicator lay in pieces in one corner (the mushrooms had disassembled and reassembled it so many times it wasn’t fun anymore), a vortex manipulator had been painted a startling violet (splashes of paint stained almost every surface in the shop), and several semismashed computer terminals lay in a haphazard pile across the floor, clearly the result of a recent game of “How High Can We Stack These Before They Fall Over?”

  For the first time in a long while, Phin felt at home.

  “Hey,” he said when saw what the mushrooms were working on. “That’s my ship.”

  “Boop,” said a familiar mushroom with a roundish head—the one Phin called Bertram. He made a series of swirling motions in the air with his arms, then stuck them out straight and ran around in small circles going, “Brrrooop! Vrrrooop! Grrrrroooop!”

  “You’re fixing it,” said Phin, marveling. “Making it fly again.”

  “Boop!”

  The Majulook SuperFake cloaking device had been disabled, and the Rescue Wagon looked only like itself—a lumpy, squarish escape pod with thrusters in the back, headlights up front, and a little Extraweb radial on top. Phin thought that something so plainly wonderfu
l shouldn’t spend so much time hiding itself.

  “How is the old girl?” he asked, approaching the mushrooms gathered around the hood. They’d repaired the guidance system and rotated the cooling vents. The quantum intake had been outfitted with a new carburetor, and they’d even replaced the radio. A few other modifications had been made to the ship’s inner workings that Phin couldn’t quite identify—various mushroom-made thingamajigs and doodads that had been affixed to the inside and undercarriage of the Wagon. They had even, just for fun and much to Phin’s delight, painted a pair of wicked racing stripes down the sides.

  They had also hot-glued what looked like a pair of teddy bear ears to the roof, rendering the ship 45 percent cuter.

  “This is amazing!” Phin said. He glanced around the shop. “This is where you guys come to be alone, huh?”

  “Moop moop,” said Bertram.

  “Ba-ba-boop,” said a chanterelle.

  Something else he’d been wondering resolved itself in his mind. “And that Mr. Jeremy is your dad, huh?”

  The mushrooms went back to work, tinkering with the Wagon, tightening bolts, focusing subatomic lasers. They seemed uninterested in this topic of conversation.

  “And the Bog Mutants, they’re like your big brothers. Except they don’t get to stay here. They get shipped off to work, whether they want to or not.” No wonder Mr. Jeremy hated the Phan so much, thought Phin.

  “He’s basically a good guy, your dad,” he said.

  Bertram shrugged. “Boo-boop.”

  Phin sat down on a nearby bench. A big, rough, truffle-looking mushroom handed him a tiny cup of strong, milky tea, and a doughnut. Phin sipped, nibbled, and thought. He watched the mushrooms work.

  “We’re going to change things,” he said to himself, but a few of the mushrooms looked his way, paused in their work to hear what he was saying. “We’re going to free your big brothers. And Lola will get to go home. And we’ll save the universe. And everything is going to be okay.”

  He didn’t half believe it himself.

  He wasn’t even sure if they could understand him.

  But it didn’t matter.

  One of the rounder-headed little mushrooms took his empty mug and patted him on the knee.

  “All right, break’s over,” Phin said, slapping his thighs and standing. “Let’s get to work.”

  36

  LOLA DIDN’T WANDER FAR but soon became lost. The tunnels of Satellite B seemed grown, rather than designed, and soon she’d followed their twisting hollows to a dimly lit storage room. Metallic shelving loomed out of the darkness, heavy with unrecognizable equipment and boxes overflowing with mechanical paraphernalia.

  Lola hoisted herself up on a crate. She didn’t care that it was dusty and damp, or that the close, humid air was making her sweat. She curled her knees to her chest, closed her eyes, and tried to think. Her brain was a hurricane of activity, but no answers revealed themselves. She breathed in and sighed.

  “I miss you guys so much,” she said.

  The dust irritated her sinuses. She was going to sneeze. The quiet of the moment vanished as panic gripped her. After all, the last time she had sneezed she’d been thrown forward several centuries, and a thing like that tends to stick with a person. She swallowed. She tilted her head back—which her mother once told her helped nose tickles. She blinked away the water in her eyes. She breathed deep and slow. The sneeze passed.

  “ACHOO!” said someone else.

  “Bless you,” said Lola.

  “Thank you,” said the voice.

  “Ahhh!” said Lola, and nearly tumbled off her crate.

  She clambered back, pressing herself to the wall. Her eyes searched madly for the owner of the voice, but the room was dark and hazy. But something was there.

  She waited. She listened. It was quiet.

  “ACHOO!”

  “Um, bless you again?” Lola tried.

  “Thanks,” said the voice, and sniffed.

  There was nowhere to run. The thing, whatever it was, was between her and the way she’d come.

  Lola swallowed and forced her eyes to focus. She couldn’t see much, just the barest outline of a lumpy shape in the corner. No, strike that—not a lumpy shape, but a person, with its knees pulled to its chin just like hers. No, strike that again. It was a lumpy person huddled in the corner, its knees pulled to its chin just like hers.

  Lola cleared her throat. “Hello?”

  “Hi,” said the thing in the corner.

  The thing didn’t move. It spoke no more. Lola, mustering her courage, inched forward.

  “Are you . . . okay?” she asked.

  The thing cleared its throat. Its voice was thick, syrupy, like it had a nasty cold. Or maybe hay fever.

  “I think I’m lost,” it said. There was a quaver there that wasn’t just phlegm, Lola realized. It was fear.

  “Oh. Well, me too.”

  “I was supposed to be on an asteroid,” the thing said. “But I wandered away from my ship and now . . .” It sounded like it was going to cry.

  Lola scooted forward, trying to get a better look at whatever it was she was speaking to. Now she could make out a head and arms, and a peculiar sheen to the skin. There was also the glint of something . . . like a name badge.

  Lola swallowed.

  “My name is Lola,” she said.

  “Hello,” said the thing. “I’m Jeremy.”

  She shuddered.

  “Have we . . . met?”

  “Sure!” said the Jeremy. “Just now! Oh . . . wait. You mean before? Maybe? You solids all look alike to me.”

  Lola and the Bog Mutant sat in the dark, facing each other. Lola was trembling, though she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t fear, not quite, though she felt certain this was the Jeremy from the Temporal Transit Authority she’d met when she first arrived in the future, and while she’d met some nice Bog Mutants since, this was undoubtedly one who worked for the Phan. But he was different, somehow.

  Something about this place made him different.

  He’d come home, Lola realized.

  “I think . . . ,” she said, and hesitated. “Does this place seem familiar to you?”

  “The room?”

  “No,” said Lola. “The asteroid.”

  Again there was a pause, all the more unnerving here in the dark, as Lola couldn’t see what Jeremy was doing, whether he was thinking or reaching for his weapon.

  Though she didn’t quite feel afraid.

  “I think I was here a long time ago,” he said. “Yeah,” he said, remembering. “Yeah, I remember! I was here with all my brothers. And there were ships. Ships from all different places, but mostly ships from the TTA. They made me get on one of those ships. And I had to say goodbye to all my brothers. And all my other brothers . . . the little ones.”

  He must mean the mushroom people, Lola thought. All of them Mr. Jeremy’s offspring, with all the smarts given to the mushrooms, and all the nasty, unpleasant jobs given to the Bog Mutants.

  “That sounds terrible,” said Lola.

  “It wasn’t too bad,” said Jeremy. “I got a job! It’s good to have jobs.”

  Lola inched a little closer. “Do you like your job now?”

  “Mmm . . . there used to be a lot more pinochle and waiting around. Less getting lost in asteroids.”

  Lola chuckled.

  “But the job’s always the same. We’re looking for a girl.”

  Lola stopped laughing. She cleared her throat. “Why?”

  “Because she has the answer.”

  Lola felt her breath catch in her throat. “The answer to what?”

  Jeremy sniffed, and sneezed again. “Some big question.”

  Lola’s pulse quickened. When she spoke, her throat felt dry. “Do you know what the question is?”

  “Oh, everyone knows that,” said Jeremy.

  “I don’t know the question,” said Lola.

  Jeremy considered this. “Well, then maybe you know the answer,” he said.r />
  Somewhere in another room a machine chugged and rumbled. Dust sifted from the ceiling.

  “Could you at least tell me what the question is?” Lola said. “Please?”

  “Sure!” said Jeremy.

  And he told her.

  “Oh,” said Lola.

  She asked him to repeat it, and he did.

  “Oh,” she said again.

  “So. Do you know the answer?”

  The universe seemed to hold its breath, as if ready to unravel itself when she spoke. It waited and tensed.

  “No,” said Lola at last. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  37

  SOMETHING VERY BIG AND alarming was going to happen, and it was going to happen soon. But most of them didn’t know it.

  Back in Mr. Jeremy’s main chamber, Gretta had been spending some quality time with her father.

  It wasn’t going well.

  “It’s not that I don’t approve of your choices,” Mr. Jeremy was saying. “You’re a capable young Bog Mutant with a mind of her own.”

  “And here comes the guilt trip,” said Gretta, picking at what was left of their tea snacks. She rather liked the cucumber sandwiches and was curious why no one had touched them.

  “It’s just, you’re my only daughter, and I want the best for you.”

  Gretta rolled her eyes. “Dad.”

  “I’m sure there are plenty of great careers out there. I’m just not sure being evil is right for you.”

  “Oh, now he shows some concern,” said Gretta. “Not one phone call! Or a card on Child Appreciation Day!” She pointed at him, which was easy to do since he was so massive you could point pretty much anywhere in the room and be more or less on the money. “No wonder I’m maladjusted.”

  “Well . . . um . . . ,” said Mr. Jeremy awkwardly. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Oh, seriously, don’t start.”

  Mr. Jeremy, without a voice, and indeed without a throat, cleared his throat.

  “Sweetheart, it’s just I’ve been so busy trying to save the universe. And, you know, it’s not easy for a planet-sized fungal core to be a father figure.”

  Gretta shook her head. “Whatever, Dad. I’m over it.”