Si in Space (18 page)

“HEY, JOHN LUKE,
wait here for just a minute.”

You leave him in the hallway outside the bathroom, walk to the back of the spaceship, and enter a maintenance room, making sure the door is shut tight behind you.

Then you scream out loud.

You grab your nose and pinch it. ’Cause look here
 
—that can really sting. And it just sorta wakes up the eyes right above the nostrils. It’s like you’re saying to your eyeballs,
Don’t make me come up there!

Then you stretch your mouth ’cause you got some talkin’ to do.

“You listen here, Jack, and listen good. You don’t scare me, and you don’t know me, and you’re messing with the wrong guy!” This is all just practice, but CLINT can probably hear you anyway.

You throw a few air punches and play a little air guitar.

You clench your teeth, then open your mouth wide and sing,
“La, la, la,”
about a hundred times.

Then you start singing the Bee Gees’s “Stayin’ Alive.”

Let it go, Jack. Leave it all in this room.

You begin to dance.

“Think you gonna stop me? No way! I’m not going down.”

Okay.

That feels better.

You open the door again and head back to where John Luke is waiting impatiently.

“Where did you go?”

“Never mind. We have an important decision to make.”

Do you head to the computer access room, hoping you can figure out how to disconnect CLINT 1999?
Go here
.

Do you try to wake up Commander Noble so he can deal with this situation?
Go here
.

“I DEMAND THE TRUTH!”
If you're going this route, may as well be dramatic about it.

“Would you like to go first?” D. says to his cohort, P.

“Certainly,” the low, menacing voice of P. replies. “In the end it will not matter anyway, right? Their minds will be blank slates.”

“Nah. Don't think so, Jack. We're getting out of here. You don't know who you're messin' with.”

“But of course we do. Do you think it was a coincidence we decided to show up at
this
particular moment? The whole world will be talking about the missing Duck Commanders. Gone AWOL in space! Meanwhile, our invasion will commence.”

“
Invasion
is such a harsh word,” Mr. Gold-Plated D. says.

“True. How about
visitation
?”

“That's better.”

“Our goal is threefold. To infiltrate. To assimilate. To disintegrate.”

“How about ‘to exaggerate'?” you say, wiggling with your arms tied behind your back. Unfortunately they still won't budge. “So where are y'all from?”

“We are from a solar system called Bananarama.”

You and John Luke can't help laughing.

D. shakes his head. “It's very funny until we do something to you all.”

“Annihilate every human being,” P. adds.

“Oh, is that it?” you joke. “Thought y'all were gonna say something scary.”

“The creatures on this spacecraft will be sent down to Earth. To America. To places like Chicago and New York and even to ‘good ole West Monroe.' They will resemble bankers and lawyers and moms and clerks and kids. And slowly but surely, people will start to change.”

“Change?” you ask.

“Yes. Change. We will use the very thing that will be your undoing. Processed food. Like the kind you saw when you came in here.”

“What?” you say. “You're gonna annihilate us by giving us Froot Loops?”

“Yes. And Velveeta cheese. And Mountain Dew. And Doritos. And Snickers.”

“You're messin' with my diet!”

“Soon you'll all be . . . well, infected.”

“Affected,” D. says. “I prefer to say affected. We'd like to think we're impacting people in a positive way. Even if they don't realize it at the time.”

A loud blast goes off behind Daft Punk, momentarily blinding you and almost bursting your eardrums. For a second there's only smoke and dust floating around you. Then you feel something jerking and grabbing at your hands.

“Hey, leave me alone,” you call out as you're coughing.

“Silas, it's Commander Noble. We gotta get you guys out of here.” He frees your hands from the chair.

As the dust settles, you see the gold and silver helmets on the floor where the men (or aliens) are lying. Pilot Ben Parkhurst appears behind John Luke, trying to undo his ropes.

“Where'd you come from?” you wonder aloud.

“Long story we'll save for a duck blind,” an out-of-breath Commander Noble says. He quickly unties your feet. “Come on.”

You stand and help John Luke up. The two of you follow Noble and Parkhurst out of the room and into a hallway.

“We're going to the ship. We just gotta make it there,” Noble says.

The four of you run down the corridor. It's plain and bright and lit up like an Apple computer. Then it splits into three passageways.

Do you start to
 
—?

But before you're given options to decide where to go, a blistering rain of bullets tears into the wall in front of you. You and Commander Noble dart into a passage on the left to get away from them. But John Luke and Parkhurst take another route.

“John Luke!” You stop.

“He's in good hands,” Noble says as he pulls you forward.

More bullets rip into the wall.

“Think you just saved my life, Jack.”

“Keep moving!”

You run down the hallway for another ten minutes with unseen enemies pursuing you. Then you open a doorway, and you're in a window-lined corridor that borders the hangar.

You can see the
DC Enterprise
.

“I programmed the door to stay closed,” Commander Noble says, pulling a door shut behind him. “But they'll probably try getting through it anyway. You stay here for a minute. Okay?”

Before you can say anything, Noble darts through another door into the hangar and toward the
DC Enterprise
.

Now you're faced with a decision.

Do you stay put and wait?
Go here
.

Do you run into the hangar toward the
DC Enterprise
?
Go here
.

“WE’RE DEFINITELY OBTAINING
these for the mission,” you say, telling yourself not to say
hey
or
Jack
, ’cause you’re undercover.

“Is that correct?” the woman asks. Her eyes suddenly seem to darken.

No, not just darken. They went totally black.

“And how will you be using them on the mi-EEEEEEs-sion?” she asks.

Does her voice sound like
 
—?

“Sir-EEEE?” she asks.

Did she just say “Siri”? Does that mean she can read my mind? Weird.

“We’re going to blow up the capital,” John Luke blurts out.

The woman stands there, looking at you. No, she’s glaring, Jack.

This isn’t gonna be good.

She starts to smile.

“The capital?” she says.

John Luke shrugs and gives you an I-didn’t-know-what-else-to-say look.

“It’s a complicated sort of plan,” you say.

“I seeEEEEE.”

You and John Luke look at each other. Then both of you start to run.

“Did she just
 
—?” John Luke asks as you run down the hall.

“Yeah, I heard that sound.”

“It sounded like
 
—”

“I know!” you yell. “Just come on. Keep runnin’!”

You turn the corner, and you’re faced with three figures.

They’re not dressed as pirates.

They’re not a schoolteacher or a hippie vet or an ordinary teenager, either.

You think of the chattering and squeaking sound the woman made.

Sounds like some kind of monkey!

That’s it. That’s what they are.

They’re monkeys. As tall as you. Holding guns and appearing to be smiling.

It’s a real, true
Planet of the Apes
. Except they didn’t come from
our
planet!

“You dumb humans,” one of them says.

“Wait, hold on. I can explain,” you start to say, getting in front of John Luke.

But it’s too late. They’ve got you cornered. And all you can think of is a terrifying fact.

Monkeys are planning to take over the world and nobody’s gonna know.

THE END

Start over.

Read “Look at the Stars: A Note from John Luke Robertson.”

YOU DON’T BOTHER LOOKING
through the slot. Instead you do something that might be crazier
 
—you open the door, John Luke leading the charge with his cowbell.

Hey, maybe you should’ve planned and prepared some more for this. But it’s like John Luke’s driving: sometimes you just gotta hang on for dear life!

Then again, sometimes he hits a tree that suddenly sprouts out of nowhere.

Two men in black jumpsuits spin around as you crash through the door. Two helmets
 
—one silver and one gold
 
—rest on a table.

John Luke starts banging the cowbell. And . . .
it sounds exactly like a cowbell.

The men appear to be normal guys in their twenties. Except for their eyes. Their eyes look a little like
 
—

Disco balls?

“It’s not working!” John Luke shouts as he keeps banging the cowbell. It only makes noise. No electronic blasts. No explosions or fire.

One of the men walks over to a table and picks up an object that resembles a deck of cards.

He’s moving slowly, grinning, acting like this is all fun and games.

He takes a card and whips it toward you like a magician might. It lands against the wall.

This time you hear an explosion.

He does it again, and the second card narrowly misses your head. It explodes on impact with the wall behind you.

“Don’t y’all ever use
normal
weapons? Come on, John Luke!”

You guys rush out of the room and head down the stairs.

Go here
.