How to Save the Universe Without Really Trying

by John Cusick

  “I know,” said Barnabus. “I wish Phin were here to see it.”

  40

  LOLA OPENED HER EYES. She felt that something had happened, but she didn’t know what. Her breathing was hard. She could still smell the smoke and ash of the crumbling Satellite B. But her limbs vibrated with a sense of having just traveled at unbelievable speed. Her fingertips trembled, her teeth chattered, her brain was still going whoooo!

  She was sitting in the passenger seat of the Wagon, same as before.

  But no, not the same as before: the Wagon was sitting on a plate of franks and beans in a kitschy little theme restaurant.

  Which was all well and good, except the shrink ray had worn off immediately upon arrival, and so the station-wagon-sized ship was not only sitting on the plate of franks and beans, but also on what used to be a table, in what used to be the nicest corner of a small restaurant.

  To everyone else in the restaurant, it appeared as if a spaceship had just exploded itself out of the special of the day and smashed everything in its path.

  Lola took all of this in—the windows were badly smeared in baked bean sauce, so it was difficult—and pieced it together as best she could. The next thing she noticed was that Phin was not in the driver’s seat, which is where he had been a moment ago. Frantic, she turned to check the back seat. Teddy was also gone.

  But she wasn’t alone.

  “Moop,” said Bertram, still sitting in the back seat where she’d left him. “Boop?” he added in a sheepish tone, as if to say Whoops?

  Whoops was right. For where the ship had landed after its random flight through space was none other than a Big Tom’s Earth-Style Home-Cooked Food Products, located on the mezzanine level of the Hotel Maximus in the Double Platinum Gold Quadrant of the orbiting entertainment metropolis known as Singularity City, a mere four billion miles above the Singularity itself.

  The goal had been to get away, to get anywhere . . . but here.

  Phin couldn’t see. Wherever he was, it was dark. And ow-y. Every part of him ached, especially his nose. He felt for his legs. Still there. He felt for his arms. Definitely still there. The hurting nose suggested his face and probably his head were still there too, so that was all good news, at least. He was learning to look on the bright side.

  Something had gone wrong. Or perhaps something had failed to go right. Predictably, something unpredicted had happened.

  Some very interesting noises were happening now. Noises that sounded a bit like voices, and other noises that sounded a bit like music. There were smells too, the smell of fried food and salt. So perhaps he wasn’t lost in some uncomfortable void but had actually materialized somewhere.

  And perhaps, thought Phin, perhaps the fact I can’t see and the fact my nose hurts are somehow related.

  He took a moment to ponder this, then lifted up his head, which had been pressed facedown into a sack of rice. Phin sat up.

  He was seated on a counter. A steel countertop, in fact. It was evening on the boardwalk of some unknown planet. He could hear the ocean, he could hear the distant hoot and rattle of a fairground. He could smell beans. In fact, he was covered in sauce.

  What he saw were eight wobbly green faces, gaping back at him in total shock.

  They were Bog Mutants. They wore jumpsuits from the SS SunStar. And over these jumpsuits, aprons.

  “Wow!” said one. “I never seen beans do that before!”

  “I have!” said another. “Just once though.”

  “When?” said a third.

  “Today!” said the other. “Don’t you remember? We were making the tacos, and a kid and his bear just exploded right out of them.”

  “That was just now!” said the first.

  “I know!” said the second, and they all gave each other high fives for successfully completing a conversation without anyone getting hurt or burning themselves on the griddle.

  Phin looked around. There was indeed a griddle. There were also little bins of lettuce, diced tomatoes, and, of course, beans. There were also eight Bog Mutants who, until a moment ago, had been desperately trying to figure out how to fold a tortilla in half.

  There was no ship. There was no Lola. There was only Phin and Teddy, who had landed, apparently, in a taco stand.

  About a light-year away, in Big Tom’s Earth-Style Home-Cooked Food Products, people were screaming—at least, the sorts of people who were new to galactic travel and hadn’t gotten used to this sort of thing yet.

  The gentleman who’d ordered the platter of franks and beans into which the Rescue Wagon had violently materialized had, by sheer luck, just gone to the buffet a moment before and now returned to what was left of his table and gaped at what had become of his dinner.

  By amazing coincidence, this man’s name was Lucky.

  The ship lay smoldering in the wreckage of cheap plastic restaurant furniture amid a growing circle of gawkers. A hatch opened and a girl in very strange clothing emerged. She shook herself and looked around.

  “Hi,” she said. “Where am I?”

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” said the man whose dinner had just been obliterated. “Oh, this is really too much. Waiter! Waiter!”

  The waiter, a pimply-faced Gropuloid in an unflattering uniform, looked up from his terminal.

  “Huh?”

  “Waiter! There is a ship in my beans,” said Lucky.

  The waiter blinked three sets of eyelids slowly. “A ship?”

  “Yes! A ship! In my beans! Destroyed half the restaurant! Look at it, man!”

  “That’s . . . ,” the waiter said, trying to think of the response that required the least effort on his part. “That’s supposed to be like that.”

  Lucky sputtered. “What?”

  “It comes with that,” said the waiter.

  “You’re saying my beans,” Lucky replied with fearsome slowness, “my beans and franks comes with a ship in it?”

  “It’s the special,” said the waiter, returning his attention to the terminal before him. “It’s the Franks and Beans Surprise.”

  “Well,” Lucky said through gritted teeth, “I am surprised!”

  “I’m glad,” said the waiter, and he went on break.

  Lucky, who through his seething fury figured he must be having some very strange luck today indeed, decided to go play the slots, and the matter was effectively resolved.

  “Come on,” Lola was saying to Bertram. “We’ve got to find Phin.”

  “Boop.”

  “Climb up,” she said, offering Bertram her shoulder. Lola turned to the crowd of onlookers, a few of which had overheard the conversation between the customer and the waiter and were now looking warily at their own orders of franks and beans, wondering if it might suddenly surprise them in a similar way.

  “Sorry, everybody,” Lola said. “Really sorry about the mess.”

  She wondered what Phin would do in this situation, and then realized that she knew. Lola puffed out her chest, threw her head back haughtily, and said, “Well, we’ve got to save the universe now, so we’re just going to leave this ship here. If you’ve got any complaints, call someone less important.”

  And then she hurried out of the restaurant, feeling wickedly smug.

  41

  THE STREETS OF SINGULARITY City were not so much streets as flashing, jangling, pulsing causeways of strobe lights, neon signs, and glowing marquees. If the concourse on Luna had been a feast for the eyes, Singularity City gorged them.

  “It’s like Atlantic City on steroids,” Lola said.

  “Froop,” agreed Bertram, and buried his face in her hair.

  Ambling, hovering, and slurping along the sidewalks was every variety of alien. Sluggoids and Squid People, humans and Farquoids. Families of Driplions chattered at each other about which attraction they should visit next. A pair of life-bonded Thwoks argued over whether their quickie marriage had been a good idea, or whether they should try getting married again at the chapel across the street, just to see if that one had better hors d’o
euvres. And giggling Chambloons knocked their five heads together in giddy revelry.

  They came to a small square with a fountain in the middle, the gap in the glimmering spacescrapers affording a slivered view of the swirling sky above. To one side was a large terminal, above which a complex hologram slowly rotated, a flashing arrow indicating You Are Here.

  “We’ve got to find Phin,” Lola said. “Do you know how to work this terminal thing?”

  “Shoop,” said Bertram, and trotted down her arm to the controls. His little fingers whirled across the keys. A pale-green halo began to pass back and forth through the hologram, scanning, Lola guessed, for Phin. At last it flashed red. Subject Not Found.

  “We were supposed to arrive together; maybe he’s somewhere nearby?”

  “Groop,” said Bertram, and pointed.

  Across the square was an identical terminal, and it was doing the same green-flashy-scanny thing. Lola peered through the crowd, hope catching in her throat. Perhaps it was Phin scanning for them. A gap appeared in the pedestrian traffic, clearing her view—and she gasped.

  Huddled around the terminal were three Temporal Transit Authority Bog Mutants, and Lola had a sinking feeling they were scanning for her.

  “Oh no.”

  She could see a red dot appear on the Mutant’s holographic map, and with that the trio turned . . . and looked right at her.

  “Boop!” said Bertram.

  “Good idea,” said Lola, and ran.

  The Bog Mutants took slimy, wobbly pursuit.

  “Stop right there!” they shouted. “Or there! Or there is fine!”

  “Nope!” Lola shouted back, leaping over a bench, ducking under a pair of flying Grograks.

  “Broop!” said Bertram, impressed.

  “Well, I get chased a lot,” said Lola.

  Suddenly she had an idea. Or at least, the beginning of an idea.

  Skidding around a corner, she paused for just an instant to scan the avenue. There, under a gleaming marquee, was a door.

  “Aha!” she said, and ducked inside.

  The Bog Mutants rounded the corner just as the door swung shut.

  “She went in the thing!” said one, so excited to have spotted her he’d forgotten the word for gift shop.

  The Bog Mutants formed up ranks. They had her now. Disintegrators at the ready, they marched into the store.

  The little bell above the door went ding-ding.

  “Hi!” said the clerk. “Can I interest you in a Singularity mug? See, it’s got a little programmed gravity well inside so any coffee within a ten-foot radius automatically gets sucked right in! Only five ninety-five! A steal at twice the price!”

  “Yes!” said the lead Bog Mutant with determination. “But not right now.” It was a small shop. The walls were lined with Singularity trinkets. In the center were several circular racks of T-shirts with dumb slogans, and along one wall hung three-wheeled star-trikes for rent. A fan turned slowly on the ceiling. Apart from the clerk, it was vacant. No sign of their prey.

  “Find her!” ordered the Bog Mutant commander, who was, by an almost imperceptible degree, smarter than the other two. “She’s got to be in this shop!”

  “Maybe she’s in disguise!” said his lieutenant.

  “As what?”

  “Um, a mug?”

  “Get her!” shouted the third, and blasted the mug the clerk was holding to smithereens.

  “You idiot! We need her alive!” snapped their leader. “Don’t shoot any more mugs.”

  “Right, sorry.”

  They made their way grimly through the shop. They peered behind mirrors. They checked under hats. The girl, it seemed, had vanished.

  “You might try,” the clerk said, waggling his hand, which still smarted, “the dressing room.”

  “She’s disguised as a dressing room!” shouted the Bog Mutant lieutenant, and raised his weapon. The commander snapped at him to lower it at once.

  Together they entered the changing area.

  There were three stalls. They opened the first.

  Empty.

  They opened the second.

  And found her.

  “Dang it,” said Lola. “I thought you’d just skip right to the third one. Don’t you know they’re always hiding in the third one?”

  “You’re coming with us,” said the Bog Mutant commander.

  “Wait, wait,” Lola pleaded. “Can’t I just . . . could I just . . .”

  “No last requests,” growled the Bog Mutant commander.

  “I just want to buy a T-shirt!” Lola hollered as they dragged her, struggling, into the night.

  42

  BACK AT THE TAQUERIA of the Bog Mutants, things were not going well. It was cramped. The front panel had not yet been opened for business and though the evening was cool, the unventilated tin box in which Phin and the Bog Mutants stood was hot and sticky. Phin was the stickiest of all, covered in sauce. And to be the stickiest, grossest person in a small room full of Bog Mutants was quite an accomplishment.

  “What planet is this?” Phin asked.

  “We’re not . . . sure? We just landed on the first planet we came to.”

  “Well,” said Phin, “how long did you fly? What was your trajectory? What did your ship’s computer tell you?”

  There was a long pause in which ten Bog Mutants’ mouths opened with excruciating slowness.

  “No, stop it, don’t even try to answer,” said Phin.

  Without another word he turned and marched through the door and out into the night.

  It really was a beautiful night on Garboling-Lang, the planet Phin now found himself on. He recognized it immediately by the twin crescent moons and third, heart-shaped moon that had been carved that way by a lovesick terra-forming drone a few years back. (It had been all over the news, one of those “This Terraforming Drone Falls in Love, and You Won’t Believe What Happens Next: Click Here to Find Out” articles.) The taco stand, Phin now saw, had been fashioned from the airlock of a large, sleekly red space limo, the very ship the Bog Mutants had used to escape the SS SunStar. They’d simply parked it and opened up shop.

  In all, the Bog Mutants hadn’t chosen a bad place for a taco stand, positioned on the boardwalk near the Lang-o-Lin Sea. It was a beautiful and romantic spot, and just the kind of place where you’d want to grab a taco after a long walk up the beach.

  Several people had this same thought, apparently, as there was a long line of customers waiting for the taco stand to open—or, to be more accurate, waiting for the Bog Mutants to figure out how to make tacos. Phin found himself standing at the front of this line.

  The front panel of the taco stand opened up behind Phin, spilling halogen light and the smell of frying beans out onto the boardwalk.

  “Hello!” said one of the Bog Mutants. “I think we’ve got it figured out now! Step right up!”

  “Hey!” someone at the back of the line shouted. “That guy cut the line!”

  “I’m not cutting!” Phin shouted. He tried to back out of the way. “Go right ahead, I don’t even want a . . .”

  “Here you go!” said a Bog Mutant, placing a very poorly assembled taco in Phin’s hand.

  Phin looked at it. He looked at the line of angry customers. “Oh,” he said wearily. “Fantastic.”

  “Get the line cutter!” someone shouted.

  They rushed him. Phin was grabbed by several powerful tentacles and hoisted into the air. The plan, it seemed, was to chuck him into the alkaline sea, which was perfectly fine for the jellyfish people of Garboling-Lang but would sear his skin off in seconds.

  “Throw him in!” the crowd chanted. “Throw him in!”

  “Stop!” Phin hollered, struggling the best he could. “Here, just take the taco! It’s not even a good taco. You can have it!”

  “Throw him in! Throw him in!”

  “Unhand that boy!” said a voice.

  It was a deep and burly voice, a voice of wisdom and compassion. It was the kind of voice that could stop
an angry mob in its tracks, which is exactly what it did.

  Together they turned to see who had spoken. Standing on the counter, sticky with bean sauce and powdered here and there with cornmeal, was a bear. A teddy bear.

  “Teddy!” said Phin, or rather, thought Phin. His mouth merely hung slack.

  “I said, unhand that boy!” Teddy stretched out his paws like an angry deity, seeming massive and imposing despite his small size.

  “Space wizard,” someone whispered.

  Slowly, slowly, the crowd lowered Phin to the ground.

  “Good. Now, Phineas,” said Teddy, pulling a pair of roundish spectacles from the folds of his fur and putting them on. “Apologize to these good people.”

  “What?” said Phin. “I mean . . . what! You! I . . . !” Phin fumed. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “I believe you owe them,” said Teddy with infinite patience, “an apology.”

  Everyone was silent. Phin felt several dozen eyes fall to him. He cleared his throat.

  “I, uh . . .” He coughed into his fist. “Sorry, everybody.”

  “Now give them the taco.”

  “Here’s your taco,” said Phin, handing the nearest jellyfish the now-mangled remains of tortilla, lettuce, and undercooked rice.

  “And as for the rest of you,” said Teddy, climbing down from his perch and dusting himself off. “Your evening snack will have to wait. This lad and I have a universe to save.”

  “That’s true,” said Phin.

  “And I’m afraid we will need to commandeer,” finished Teddy, “this taco stand.”

  43

  WE ARE COMING VERY close to the end now. Can you feel it?

  In a way, every creature in the universe felt it. It was a tickle at the back of the neck, or necks, or gills, or misty-plasma-ventricles, depending on the species. It was the phantom vibration in your pocket, just before your phone rings, the sense that something is about to happen.

  A question rumbled through the walls of the universe, and its askers were approaching. It pulsed, it throbbed, it burned to be answered.

  How . . . ?

  How . . . ?

  How . . . ?