How to Save the Universe Without Really Trying

by John Cusick

  She stood and checked her tablet. “Something very alarming is about to happen, you know,” she said.

  “I am aware,” said Mr. Jeremy, whose extrasensory perception was much more acute than his paternal sensitivities.

  “So,” said Gretta. She wasn’t sure what else there was to say. “So,” she said again.

  “I am sorry I wasn’t there for you, my child,” said Mr. Jeremy, his words rolling like waves through her mind, crashing on the hard, jagged rocks of her soul. “And I am proud of you.”

  “Well,” said Gretta. “It’s not enough.”

  “It could not possibly be,” said Mr. Jeremy.

  And with that, several hundred quivering tendrils of mucus shot out from his body—disgustingly, lovingly—and wrapped Gretta in their embrace, shielding her from the massive explosion that brought down the walls around them.

  “HEY!” shouted the Sun-Liner security drones as several dozen sleeker, smaller ships appeared over the horizon of Satellite B. “LOOK, FELLAS! SOMETHING TO DESTROY!”

  The ships ignored the drones completely and opened fire on the planetoid below. The last of the refugees yet to board their evacuation drones ran screaming helplessly from the inferno. Mountains were upended, valleys rippled like bedsheets, and the planetoid’s surface began to splinter and crack.

  “WHOA,” said the drones, uncertain what they ought to do in this situation. These new arrivals were awesome and destructive, and frankly the drones felt a bit inferior.

  Dozens of sleek landing ships emerged from the holds of the larger vessels. In balletic formation they spread across the asteroid, alighting like fleas on the mange of an unlucky dog. These were troop ships, and soon their hatches opened, and an invading army began to march into the night.

  The drones, feeling their pride threatened and refusing to be shown up, turned their weapons on Satellite B. “COME ON, BOYS,” they radioed to one another. “LET’S SHOW ’EM HOW IT’S DONE.”

  As one, the drones pummeled the bejesus out of the asteroid below, just to prove they were better at destroying things than these other ships, which had the words Temporal Transit Authority stenciled on their sides in nasty slanted lettering.

  “What was that?” said Jeremy. Another quake shook the strange room, sending chunks of stone tumbling from the ceiling.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Lola somewhat redundantly as the world fell down around them. Suddenly filled with a clear sense of purpose, she hopped down from the crate and took Jeremy by his squishy hand. “Come on.”

  Close enough to see her face now, he gasped. “Passport!”

  “That’s not my name!” said Lola. “Now hurry, we’ve got to get out of here! I’m pretty sure we’re under attack.”

  The rumbling and quaking was worse in the tunnels.

  “Which way?” Lola hissed, and just then saw Professor Donut hobbling toward them, paws waving in adorable panic.

  “We’ve been discovered! We’re under attack! The Temporal Transit Authority has found us! Bog Mutant troops are invading the catacombs! We must get you out of here, Lola! Oh,” he said, coming up short just before them. “Hello, Jeremy.”

  “Hello,” said Jeremy, and waved.

  “Where’s Phin?” said Lola.

  Professor Donut pressed a few keys on a wall-mounted control panel. “That’s what I’m trying to establish now. He was last seen in the workshop, which is exactly where we need to be going.”

  “What about the others?” said Lola.

  The professor’s whiskers twitched with heartbreaking resignation.

  “I fear the main chamber has collapsed, with Mr. Jeremy and your green friend inside. They’re sealed off.”

  “We have to try and get them out,” Lola said. The professor clutched her hand before she could run off.

  “I’m afraid we can’t, my dear. But Mr. Jeremy is resourceful. And we can’t let you fall into the Phan’s clutches.”

  Together the three of them ran, hobbled, and wobbled through the catacombs. Blast after blast rocked the asteroid, and Lola tried desperately not to think about the tons of rock above her head. She tried thinking about kitties, but now she associated kitties with interstellar warfare and destruction. Same problem with lime Jell-O. And teddy bears. And scones. All of her go-to happy thoughts seemed to be associated with something nasty now.

  Purple, thought Lola. She would think of the color purple. It was her favorite color. Her favorite T-shirt was purple. The walls of her room back home were painted purple. And so far in her galactic travels nothing bad had happened with the color purple. That would be her happy thought.

  Ahh, thought Lola.

  “Ahh!” shouted Phin, blasting them with a high-pressure cannon full of purple paint as they came through the doors.

  38

  IN PHIN’S DEFENSE, HE had grabbed the nearest thing at hand when it appeared a Bog Mutant had burst through the doors of the workshop—albeit a Bog Mutant in the company of two other Bog Mutants cleverly disguised as Lola and the professor. Now all three and most of the wall were cleverly disguised as purple pond monsters.

  “Sorry!” he said, realizing his mistake. “Sorry, sorry. It washes right off, I promise.”

  It didn’t.

  “Phin!” said Lola in a swirl of relief and fear and supreme annoyance. “What is going on?”

  “Lots!”

  In the center of the workshop was some sort of spacecraft, looking like a station wagon and a ham radio had a baby, but spliced some Formula 1 DNA in there just for fun. Whatever the ship was, it looked to be half finished or under repair. Tubing snaked from its exposed engine, and bits of paneling hung open, spilling their wire guts onto the floor. Frantic mushrooms swarmed everywhere.

  “Is that the Rescue Wagon?” said Lola. “And are those teddy bear ears glued to the top?”

  “It is, and they are.” Phin hauled a length of tubing out from under the ship’s chassis. “The mushrooms fixed it. And they’ve also done a bunch of other stuff to it. But right now it’s our only way out of here, and by the way feel free to help at any time.”

  Lola looked around for something to help with. Bertram was trying to clamber onto the roof. Lola gave him a boost.

  “I assume all that shaking and all those explosiony noises,” Phin said, frantically twisting a bolt while frantically looking at Professor Donut, “are something bad?”

  “We’ve been breached!” said the professor. “Temporal Transit Authority troops are now swarming the asteroid.”

  Bertram gestured for Lola to help him down into the interior of the Wagon. She lowered him through the open rear window and saw that Teddy had been propped up in the back seat. Lola had no idea how he’d gotten there, and decided not to ask Phin about it, as this seemed like exactly the sort of mystical nonsense that really cheesed him off.

  “The mushrooms and I will finish the ship,” Phin was saying. “Professor, why don’t you get the bay doors open so we can get to the surface.”

  “I’m afraid you’re not going to the surface, my boy,” the professor said with an air of grim calm.

  It was exactly the sort of tone someone uses just before you turn around to see they’ve pulled a gun on you.

  Slowly, Phin and Lola turned around.

  In his little paw Professor Donut held a small tin can with a familiar label.

  “You’re going in the beans.”

  “In the . . . what?” said Lola. She wasn’t sure whether or not she was being threatened or rescued. She’d experienced quite a bit of both lately and they were beginning to blend together.

  “It’s the only way,” said the professor. “We have to get you both out of here.”

  Lola looked at Phin, who was usually the source of this kind of crazy talk, but at the moment he looked as confused as she was. He wiped his forehead, which only smudged more grease onto it, and shrugged.

  “Apparently,” he said to her, “we’re going in the beans.”

  “Prepare the shrink ray!�
� the professor shouted to one of the mushroom people.

  A pair of shiitakes rushed to a large piece of equipment, identical to the one Lola had seen in the laboratory. Like everything else in the shop, it was half finished and lightly speckled with purple paint. Otherwise, it looked more or less like what you’d expect a shrink ray to look like—a large cannon mounted on a turret with lots of glowing green rings along the barrel and a big flashing node at one end.

  The rest of the mushrooms were making the last of their adjustments to the Wagon. Cables were unhooked, the tendrils of tubing were removed from the undercarriage. Phin slammed down the hood.

  Lola went to his side.

  “Phin, I have a feeling.”

  “Just one?”

  “I think something is very wrong here.”

  “Oh really. Glad you finally caught up.”

  “No! Phin, look at me!” She grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to meet her eye. “I think there’s something wrong about this whole setup. With the Phan and the Question and all that big gobbledygook. I think we’ve got all of this terribly, terribly wrong.”

  Phin was breathing hard. His face was smeared in grease and sweat, and his expression was pained. She could practically see the gears turning in his head. He believed her but didn’t understand her, and was desperately trying, in his silly boy way, to sync up their brains.

  Then he said something Lola never thought she’d hear him say.

  “So what do we do?”

  Lola glanced at the professor, who had nearly finished powering up the shrink ray.

  “Just . . . whatever happens,” she said, and this really was the moment to say something profound, at the last second before what might be their final journey, as the world crumbled around them. “Just, whatever happens . . . ,” she started again, hoping with a good run-up the sentence would finish itself under its own momentum. “Whatever happens . . .”

  And then it came to her, clear and true and honest and pure.

  “Don’t swallow your gum.”

  “My . . . what?” said Phin.

  It was, Lola wanted to explain, a catchphrase from her favorite television show, Dimension Y. It was what Professor Rivulon said to his plucky assistant, June, whenever they were in serious trouble. It was a recurring joke, in a way, a bit of nonsense that would always make June smile even when things were at their worst, and among die-hard Dimension Y enthusiasts, it was a kind of mantra, a symbol for bravery and humor in the face of stupidity and evil. In fact, Lola’s favorite T-shirt, the purple one, had the words Don’t Swallow Your Gum written on it in spangly letters. She’d bedazzled it herself and wore it on alternate days during Comic-Con and Y-Fest (along with her Bog Mutant T-shirt, which she was wearing now).

  But there was no time to explain all of this.

  Unbelievably, Phin felt strangely reassured by this piece of wisdom. No matter what happened, no matter how impossible and difficult their situation now seemed, he felt fairly confident he would not swallow his gum. He didn’t even have any gum. He didn’t even like gum. So how could he possibly swallow it? It was the one thing he had control over, and this comforted him immensely.

  The asteroid jolted. Disintegrator blasts began to pummel the bay doors.

  “They’ve found us!” Professor Donut cried. “Quick! Get into the ship!”

  Lola and Phin scrambled into the Wagon.

  “Shrink ray activating!” Professor Donut called to the mushrooms.

  “Wait!” said Lola, leaning out the window. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  “Don’t worry about us! Just get as far away as you can!”

  The can of beans had been opened and was waiting on a nearby pedestal, strange cables and sensors attached to its base. The shrink ray hummed. The bay doors were beginning to crack, and would soon crumble, releasing a horde of Temporal Transit Authority Bog Mutants. The little mushrooms were waving goodbye, and a few of them were blowing kisses.

  “Phin!” shouted Lola.

  “Hold on!” shouted Phin.

  There was a terrific bzzzzzzt.

  And everything went black.

  Part 5

  The Answer to the Question of the End

  39

  THE BIGGEST AND MOST popular attraction in the Milky Way is, without question, the Singularity.

  Located at the center of the galactic core, the Singularity is a supermassive black hole, a gravitational well four million times larger than our sun. In fact, it is the biggest thing in the Milky Way. To look upon it, say some, is to gaze into the eye of creation itself. A swirling vortex of gases and redshift twisted into a spiral whose center is a single black dot—a point so dense not even light can escape.

  Not only is the Singularity the largest black hole in the galaxy, it is also the most overdeveloped.

  Orbiting just beyond the event horizon at unreal speeds are thousands upon thousands of fancy hotels, midpriced resorts, restaurants, bars, observation ships, theme parks, and gift shops, all selling their own stock of Singularity-themed merchandise. Singularity dining sets. Singularity 3D Magic Eye™ posters. Singularity toothbrushes and beard trimmers. And of course, Singularity apparel, with slogans like I Saw the Biggest Black Hole in the Galaxy and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt, and The Singularity: Take it from me, it SUCKS!

  In all of their travels, Eliza and Barnabus Fogg had never visited the Singularity. If asked, the Foggs would have told you they thought black holes were tacky, giving new meaning to the phrase “tourist trap,” and that a respectable and sophisticated space explorer wouldn’t be caught dead near one.

  In truth, they both had always wanted to see it, and were saving it for their last stop. Which it now very much looked like it would be.

  Phin’s parents stood—or rather, teetered—on the deck of a ship overlooking the Singularity at a distance of several million miles. Like the SS SunStar, this ship’s deck was open to the stars, protected by a transparent force field, which afforded them a smashing view of the anomaly below. At this distance, the hotels and theme parks at the edge of the swirling halo seemed to twinkle like a ring of jewels. You could almost hear the classic rock emanating from all the tiki bars down there, the laughter of people enjoying themselves, and the ca-ching of a billion cash registers gobbling up their cash.

  “It’s . . . beautiful,” said Barnabus. His voice was hoarse and thin, but full of genuine wonder at the majesty of the universe.

  “Silence the prisoner!” spat Goro Bolus.

  Barnabus received a hard whack on the back of his head.

  “Sorry about that,” said the Bog Mutant who had struck Barnabus. “That sounded like it hurt.”

  The Foggs were shackled together, their clothes tattered and damp after days of torture and imprisonment. Their eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and they looked ready to collapse on the spot. Not just ready, but quite eager to, in fact. They were surrounded by Bog Mutants, each armed with his own disintegrator. The Mutants were supposed to be guarding the Foggs, but even they weren’t immune to the beauty of the Singularity. They stared at it in mute wonder—though, to be honest, they would have stared at a hoagie in mute wonder, so easily blown were their minds. One of them took a selfie with the Singularity over his shoulder.

  “Stop that,” growled Bolus from his position behind the control board. “You’re supposed to be menacing them, not taking pictures!”

  The Bog Mutant he was addressing sheepishly tucked away his camera and shifted his weight.

  The ship on which they now stood was Goro Bolus’s personal yacht, the Tin Can. It was parked in space just a few hundred miles from a hypergate—the largest the Fogg-Bolus Corporation had ever built, big enough to accommodate the titanic amount of tourist traffic the Singularity received. Even now, cruise ships and budget star liners streamed through its portal, flying in long neat lines toward the hotels, spaceports, and parking garages below.

  “I wanted you to be here when it happens,” Bolus said, drumming his finge
rs. “I felt it only right you should witness the coming of our new overlords, seeing as you built the gates that will allow them to enter our world.”

  The plan, in its essence, was simple, and had been planted in Bolus’s mind all those years ago, during the short phone call with the Phan. With the Foggs’ access codes, Bolus had control over the mainframe connecting every hypergate in the galaxy. By inputting computations the Phan had embedded in his brain, Bolus could link the hypergates together. Their combined power would then resonate with the Singularity, creating a tear in the fabric of the universe—one big enough to allow the Phan in.

  And then . . . something would happen. Bolus wasn’t actually sure what. It had something to do with the half-articulated question that echoed in his skull, that infuriating How . . . ? How . . . ? How . . . ? But the Phan had promised him a reward. Wealth and power everlasting. And that was all that really mattered.

  “You used to be so kind,” moaned Eliza Fogg to their captor. “They’ve changed you somehow. Can’t you see that?”

  “I was never kind,” spat Bolus. “I was polite, at best. Too polite to tell you how much I despised the pair of you. I mean, honestly, always gallivanting around the galaxy. Leaving me to run things by myself. I did all the work while you had fun.”

  “You could have taken a vacation!” said Barnabus. “Heck, take one now! We can recommend some great places!”

  “Nice, out-of-the-way places,” Eliza insisted. “With wine lists miles long. It’d do you good!”

  “Really,” said Barnabus. “You could get a tan! Or, er . . . does your species get tanned?”

  “Silence!” growled Bolus, rapping his fist on the control panel. The Foggs, and the Bog Mutants guarding them, quavered. “I brought you here to witness your doom, not talk!”

  The Foggs fell silent. Eliza leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder, and together, wrists bound, they fumbled for one another’s hands.

  “I almost wish . . . ,” she said softly, the light of collapsing reality shining in her eyes.