Akiko and the Alpha Centauri 5000 Read online

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  To three good friends:

  Dennis Moylan, Thom Powers, and John Walter

  This book might never have made it across the finish line if not for the expert navigating skills of my editor, Jennifer Wingertzahn, who was always near the dashboard when I needed her, pointing out the asteroids and telling me when I had the map upside down. Special thanks to others who have worked behind the scenes to get Akiko to where she is today: Joe Monti, Ridge Rooms, Robb Horan, Larry Salamone, Mark Bellis, Melissa Knight, and Colleen Fellingham. As always I send hugs and kisses to my wife, Miki, and son, Matthew.

  This is the story of how I went from building a snowman to flying through a black hole to nearly getting crushed by the Jaws of—

  Well, I don't want to give it all away.

  Let's just say for now that some really weird stuff happened to me the other day. Stuff involving my friends from the planet Smoo, a big rusty spaceship named Boach's Bullet, and several tons of something green and smelly called grull.

  See what I mean? Weird stuff.

  I'll start with the snowman.

  It was a freezing cold January morning, a Saturday. My best friend, Melissa, and I were playing in Middleton Park, just a few blocks from the apartment building where we both live. We were chucking snowballs at each other, making sorry-looking igloos, and just generally goofing around with the six or seven inches of snow that had fallen the night before.

  “Middleton is nowhere,” said Melissa. “When I grow up I'm moving to a big city. Where exciting stuff happens. Every day, all the time. And I'll tell everyone I meet: Stay away from Middleton. Unless you really like being bored.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “It's not that bad.”

  Melissa chucked a snowball and we both watched it slide across the frozen duck pond. I threw one too, but it didn't go as far.

  “Trust me, Akiko. I've been to Chicago and Milwaukee and Cincinnati. Those are real cities. Your problem is you've never been away from your own hometown.”

  (Melissa's problem is she starts too many sentences with “Your problem is.”)

  “I have too,” I said.

  “Where have you been?”

  “I've been to places you've never even heard of.”

  “Such as?”

  If only I could tell her: Smoo! Quilk! The castle of Alia Rellapor!

  “Leamington.”

  “Lea mington?” She laughed and shook her head. “I've been to Leamington. It's even worse than Middleton.” She threw another snowball. “When I get older I'm going to stay away from any place that ends with -ton.”

  “I like Leamington,” I said. “My gramma lives there.”

  “You like everything,” Melissa said. “That's your whole problem.”

  Then Melissa's mom called her from the top of a hill on the other side of the duck pond.

  “Come on, 'Liss! Time to go!”

  “But Mom,” she said, “we're in the middle of something really important here.”

  Ha!

  “Count of ten: one& two&”

  “Mom!” Melissa pleaded. She stretched it out until it sounded like Maaaah-um.

  “& three & four &”

  “Gotta go.” Melissa sighed, dropped the snowball she'd been making, and trotted off around the edge of the duck pond. I stood there and watched the puffs of breath trail off behind her.

  “See ya, Melissa!”

  “See ya!”

  A minute later there was no one in the park but me.

  I was about to head back home, but then I decided to make a snowman. We don't get that much snow in Middleton, so there are only so many chances for snowman making before it's suddenly March and the so-called snow is so gray and slushy you don't want your mittens going anywhere near it.

  I had finished with the second big ball of snow— the snowman's belly—and was working on the third when I began to feel warm. Seriously warm. It was like I was being heated from inside or something. I unzipped my coat and loosened my scarf a little, but it didn't really help. I took off my mittens and stuffed them in my coat pockets.

  That's when it started happening.

  First my hand-knit winter hat disappeared. It sort of loosened itself from my head like it was, I don't know, letting go of me. And then it just vanished. By that point I was feeling downright feverish. I reached into my coat to loosen my scarf a little more and found that it had disappeared too.

  “Uh-oh.”

  Then my eyes went haywire. All of Middleton Park started to lose its color. The black tree trunks faded to gray and then to white, all the buildings turned white, and the sky turned white: I could hardly see anything but white, no matter what direction I turned.

  There was a surge of heat from inside me, like a burst of flame right between my heart and my stomach.

  DOP!

  DADA-DOP!

  DADA-DOP-DOP-DOP!

  A popping noise shot through my skull from one ear to the other, and when I looked down & I couldn't see my body anymore! Everything around me got whiter and whiter until I was surrounded by a million little white-hot suns and I had to shut my eyes and throw my hands over them and &

  FFLAAAAAAAAAM!

  There was a terrific slamming sound, louder than anything I'd ever heard in my life.

  FLA-FFLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAMMM!

  A second sound, even louder. Then:

  Total silence.

  zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  Except for a low, buzzing hum in my head.

  I uncovered my eyes.

  I was kneeling in the middle of a large gray square, smooth and glossy, but with scuff marks all over it like a well-used floor. Middleton Park was gone, replaced by a sea of blackness in all directions. Well, most of Middleton Park was gone, anyway. My now half-melted snowman was still right there in front of me, for some reason.

  The humming slowly gave way to a loud rattling noise, like an old muffler in need of repair. There was a flicker of light, then all at once everything snapped into focus: I was in a small room cluttered with all sorts of strange machines and flashing orange lights. On one side of the room was a large glass windshield, beyond which lay a field of stars.

  I was inside a spaceship.

  “Wait! Look!” said a familiar voice just behind me. “That's her! She's coming through!”

  “You're a lucky man, Beebs,” said a second voice, just as familiar. “Let's hope her innards didn't get flipped upside down.”

  I spun around and found myself face to face with my Smoovian friends, Spuckler and Mr. Beeba. They were crouching just beyond the edge of the square, staring at me with wide eyes. Behind them to the left was Spuckler's rusty robot, Gax, and hovering above Gax was Poog in all his strange purple-round glory.

  Mr. Beeba flinched and pointed behind me.

  “Good heavens!” he cried. “She's not alone! We've picked up some sort of alien ice creature!”

  “Don't worry, Beebs,” said Spuckler, eyeing the unfinished snowman. “It ain't breathin'. I think the Trans-Moovulator musta killed it.”

  “What& ” I started.

  “How&”

  I paused.

  Took a deep breath.

  “Where am I?”

&nb
sp; said Mr. Beeba. “There will be plenty of time for explanations later.…”

  “No no no no no!” I said. “I want the explanations now. Right now.”

  Mr. Beeba and Spuckler glanced at each other. Gax rattled a bit, and Poog smiled apologetically.

  “We needed ya, 'Kiko,” said Spuckler. “And there jus' wasn't time to send ya a letter.…”

  “We'll put you right back where you were, dear girl,” Mr. Beeba said, fiddling with his puffy gloved fingers. “Just as soon as we're finished.”

  A few feet behind Mr. Beeba's head was a wall with a round glass portal in it, like something salvaged from an abandoned submarine. Judging by the stars racing by beyond it, we were moving at an incredible speed.

  “As soon as we're finished with what?”

  “I TOLD THEM IT WASN'T A GOOD IDEA!” Gax said, his mechanical voice high-pitched and tinny. “I TOLD THEM IT WOULD ONLY MAKE YOU ANGRY.…”

  Poog, who had been silent until now, blurted out a few syllables in his warbly, gurgly language. I assumed he was agreeing with Gax.

  “Okay. Answer time! What's going on here?”

  “Look, 'Kiko.” Spuckler dragged a hand through his spiky blue hair. “It's real simple. There's this big rocket-ship race, ya see, goin' from one side of the universe to the other—”

  “An unconscionable misrepresentation of the facts,” Mr. Beeba told me. “It runs only 7/29 of the way at most. The promoters, however, would love to have you believe otherwise.”

  I blinked and said nothing. I figured the longer I let them talk, the better the chances of them saying something that made sense.

  “Th' first rocket ship to make it 'cross the finish line wins the Centauri Cup,” Spuckler continued. “And I reckon we got that cup just about in the bag s'long as we get this here spaceship's Hurlix 'Puter programmed right.”

  The odds of them making sense were starting to look slim.

  “Tragically,” said Mr. Beeba, “the programming manual Spuckler bought—”

  “Secondhand, for five gilpots,” Spuckler whispered with a wink.

  “—is written in an alien tongue that I am quite unable to read,” Mr. Beeba said. “A spec tac ularly rare occurrence, mind you. I got my doctorate in interplanetary linguistics, you know.”

  Spuckler continued: “So it turns out your home planet ain't more'n a hop, skip, and a jump from the startin' line.” He signaled with a finger that this was where I came in. “And with the race beginnin' in just another half an hour, we didn't have time to pick y'up the usual way.”

  I kept blinking. They kept talking.

  “As luck would have it, this ship is equipped with a Trans-Moovulator.” Mr. Beeba pointed at a two-foot-square box nearby. It was covered with dials and wheezed loudly every few seconds like a coffeemaker. “I trust the trip from Earth to this ship wasn't too unpleasant for you.”

  I stood there staring at Spuckler and Mr. Beeba for a good half-minute. Their explanation—if that's what you want to call it—was apparently finished.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You guys are competing in some big rocket-ship race &”

  Mr. Beeba and Spuckler nodded in unison.

  “& and you've got some sort of manual you can't read &”

  They nodded again.

  “& and for some reason you thought I might be able to help you &”

  Another nod.

  “& and so you just beamed me up here without even warning me!”

  “Beamed is such a crude word, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba said. “We Trans-Moov ulated you.”

  “I don't care what word you use!” I cried. “You guys can't just snatch me up off the face of the Earth any time you feel like it!”

  There was a brief pause.

  “Oh, but we can,” Mr. Beeba said. “You see, that's the marvelous thing about Trans-Moovulation technology—”

  “Okay, you can. Obviously you can. You just did.”

  I was getting warm again, only this time it was from good old-fashioned anger.

  “But & ” I continued, pointing a very pointy finger first at Mr. Beeba, then at Spuckler, “& don't expect me to be happy about it.”

  past the stars as Gax mopped up the melted remains of my snowman. Spuckler was seated at the front of the ship, steering us through a field of whirling pink asteroids. Mr. Beeba invited me to sit down on a passenger seat that folded out from one of the walls. He then brought me a glass filled with a brownish gray sludge that was supposed to ease the effects of being Trans-Moovulated. By the time I'd finished swigging it down—it wasn't half bad, actually—I was starting to get used to the idea that I'd be spending the next few hours helping Spuckler and Mr. Beeba in their quest to win the Centauri Cup. It was a Saturday in January. What else was I going to do?

  “I still don't get it. What does this unreadable manual have to do with me?”

  “Well, Akiko,” Mr. Beeba answered, “it just so happens that the text in question was published on the planet Jabble.” He said this last word as if he fully expected me to recognize it, as if there was no need to say anything else.

  He reached into a nearby drawer, pulled out a thick, dog-eared manual, and carefully opened it. He placed it in front of me. The words on the page were squared off and crisscrossed with intricate lines. Actually, they didn't even look like words. They were more like computer chips.

  “Well?” said Mr. Beeba.

  I scratched the back of my neck. “Am I supposed to be able to read this, Mr. B.?”

  “Not all of it! My word, no, certainly not. But I do distinctly recall your telling me—and I never forget something like this—that both of your parents are of Jabblenese descent and that as a result you know a fair amount of the language yourself.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Jabblenese? Jabble nese?” I said. It was all I could do to stop from smacking my forehead like a guy in an old movie. “My parents aren't Jabblenese! They're Jap anese!”

  Mr. Beeba said nothing. He was still smiling, for some reason.

  “You mean they're from the planet Japa?”

  “My parents are from the planet Earth! They can't read Jabblenese, and neither can I!”

  There was a very long pause, during which Mr. Beeba did nothing but stare at me. His smile had vanished, and now his lips were puckered into a little O-shaped hole.

  “Oh dear.”

  He closed the manual, put it in the drawer, then turned back to me and stared a little more.

  “Well, it's nothing to be ashamed of, Akiko,” he said at last. “I'm sure you'd pick up the language quickly enough if you had a good Jabblenese tutor.”

  “Don't worry, 'Kiko,” said Spuckler. “I've flown this ship loadsa times without even usin' the Hurlix 'Puter. It'll be tricky, but we'll scrape by without it.”

  With all the pink asteroids zipping past, some of them missing us by just a few yards, I didn't like the idea of being inside a ship that was scraping by.

  “So, uh, what exactly does the Hurlix Computer do?”

  “Makes the ship easier t' steer,” Spuckler explained. “When you ain't got her programmed right, you hafta do everything manually.”

  I looked at the countless knobs, buttons, lights, and levers that covered the dashboard. It wasn't something I'd want to deal with manually. It wasn't something I'd want to deal with at all.

  “How did you ever learn to fly this thing?” I asked.

  “Trial an' error, 'Kiko. Trial an'—”

  KRRRAAAAAASH!

  Suddenly the ship jerked to one side, sending Mr. Beeba and me rolling wildly across the floor. Poog darted along after me, and Gax, with great difficulty, wheeled himself over to Spuckler's side.

  “Sorry, gang, hit an asteroid there,” Spuckler called out as he tried to get the spaceship level. “That won't happen agai—”

  FWWAAAAAMM!

  “Dagnabbit!”

  This time the ship flipped completely upside down, and Mr. Beeba, Gax, and I flew through the air and tumbled acr
oss the ceiling, which for all practical purposes was now the floor. Something hit me hard in the head—possibly one of Gax's spare parts—and made a loud twanging noise as it bounced off and spun away into the darkness.

  Spuckler, who had strapped himself into the driver's seat, was just as upside down as the rest of the ship. He didn't even seem to notice, actually. He was too busy punching buttons and pulling levers, weaving us through the cloud of asteroids that now surrounded us.

  “Man, this is gonna slow us down,” Spuckler said, sounding like a trucker stuck in traffic. “All the best places on the starting line'll be nabbed by the time we get there.”

  “Never mind the starting line, you idiot!” Mr. Beeba shouted. “Get this ship right side up again!”

  “Right side down, inside up,” said Spuckler as we zoomed beneath one particularly massive asteroid, “I don't see what the heck difference it makes.”

  “Please, Spuckler!” I cried, holding on to a ceiling lamp for dear life, “I'm getting seasick.”

  “You mean s pace sick, 'Kiko,” said Spuckler.

  “Quite right,” said Mr. Beeba. “Unless you meant to use the phrase metaphorically, of course.”

  “Whatever!” I yelled.

  “All right, all right.” Spuckler gave the steering wheel an abrupt jerk and sent all of us flying back to the floor. This time I landed squarely on my butt, and Mr. Beeba flopped right down on top of me. He mumbled an apology as he pulled himself off.

  PWWWAAAAAMM!

  “Okay, gang,” said Spuckler as the ship shook from yet another collision. “I think that's the last of 'em.”

  TWWAAM!

  “'Cept for that one.”

  Sure enough, the pink asteroids had disappeared from view and the ship was now sailing smoothly through the stars. Poog smiled and made a series of garbled gurgles, which Mr. Beeba translated as follows:

  “It won't be long now. The starting line is only ten minutes away at most.”

  The brush with the asteroids inspired me to take one last stab at talking my way out of this.

  “Look, guys,” I said, “I can't read Jabblenese, so you don't really need me to be here.”