License to Thrill (2 page)

“Who's that?”

“Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,” Coke replied. “ROY G BIV. It's a mnemonic device people use to learn the colors of the rainbow, in order of decreasing wavelengths.”

“Oh, yeah,” Pep said, remembering her fifth-grade science class. “
Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain. Rinse Out Your Granny's Boots in Vinegar.
It's VIBGYOR backward. That's how
I
remember it.”

“Look at all the colors!” Coke said. “There are frequencies of light that I've never experienced before. Do you see 'em?
Wonderful
colors! They don't exist in our spectrum. They don't exist in our world.”

“I see 'em,” Pep said, looking all around. “I see 'em.”

And then, suddenly, the lights went out. The twins were in total darkness.

“Who turned out the lights?” Coke asked, knowing full well that his sister had no idea who turned out the lights.

“I'm scared,” Pep said, gripping her brother's hand even more tightly. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

The darkness—the blackness—was total. There were no pinpricks of light scattered about. It felt like they must be indoors. They must have entered
something
. But there were no slits under a doorway where outside light could sneak through. Nothing. Their eyes were not going to adjust to the dark. There was nothing to adjust to. It was a power outage. A blackout. It was like all the light in the world had suddenly been switched off.

“What's happening?” Pep asked, just to make sure her brother was still there.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Maybe we were blinded,” Pep said, shivering. “Maybe those lights wiped out our retinas, like an eraser on a whiteboard. Maybe we'll be blind
forever
.”

And deaf? Coke wondered. The silence was
overwhelming. The humming noises were gone. There was no wind, no rustling of leaves in the trees, no chirping of birds. The twins could hear only the sound of their breathing. Pep thought she could detect her own heartbeat. But that was because it was beating very hard, and very fast.

She began to sob softly. Coke put his arm around her.

“Shhhh,” he said. “We're gonna be okay.”

It was wishful thinking.

Coke realized, an instant before his sister did, that he was no longer floating. His feet were on a surface now, and he could support his own weight. The floor must have come up from under them. He let go of Pep's hand and got down on his knees.

“It's soft,” he whispered. “I can push my thumb into it and it springs back. It's sort of rubbery. Spongy. Like a padded playground.”

“Let's get out of here,” Pep whimpered. “I want to go back to the motel. Back to Mom and Dad.”

“We've got to find the edge,” Coke said, feeling around on the ground. “It must end somewhere. Maybe there's a door.”

Pep had no choice but to get down on the floor with him. Coke was all she had, and she couldn't risk losing him.

“I have the feeling that somebody's watching us,” she whispered.

“No time for your feelings,” her brother replied, irritated. “The sooner we find the edge, the sooner we get out of here.”

After a few minutes of crawling around, Coke
did
find an edge, a spot where the floor met a wall that seemed vertical, or close to it. He moved his hands up the wall, feeling around for a window or the crack of a door, but it was perfectly smooth and cold to the touch. He got back down on his knees so he could follow the wall around. It seemed like the room they were in was a large circle, maybe twenty or twenty-five feet in diameter.

“I feel something!” Pep suddenly shouted.

Coke crawled over to his right about ten feet, and he felt it too—vertical bars extending from the floor to as high as he could reach. They were made of some kind of metallic substance, about as thick as a salt shaker, and spaced five or so inches apart. The bars were too close together to squeeze through.

“It's like a cage,” Coke said, gripping the bars and trying to shake them. “We're locked in.”

“Like prisoners in jail,” Pep said.

“Or animals in a zoo,” her brother added.

That's when the lights flashed on, for just a
millisecond or two. It was a familiar white light this time, but painfully bright. Both twins covered their eyes with their hands. But for one split second, they were looking through the bars.

And in that split second, Pep glimpsed the alien.

N
ow, those of you who have been following the Genius Files know that I don't particularly like to describe what characters look like. For one thing, it's boring. Nobody wants to read page after page about somebody's face.

For another thing, if you have a short attention span like many of us do, you probably forget what characters look like five minutes after you read the description. That's why it doesn't say what Coke and Pep look like in
any
of these books.

You want to know what the twins look like? Look
at the book covers! There they are, jumping off a cliff, diving out of a boat or a helicopter. And if you want to know what Dr. Warsaw, Mrs. Higgins, the bowler dudes, or any of the other characters look like,
use your imagination
. That's what it's there for.

Having said all that, rules are meant to be broken. And this seems like the perfect time to break one.

You probably have a mental image of what a space alien looks like. You've seen hundreds of them in schlocky movies, TV shows, commercials, comic books, and so on. They're usually green, for some unknown reason, and they have these enormous, bulbous heads that are way out of proportion to their ridiculously skinny bodies. They never seem to have any hair, and they just stand there with emotionless, creepy-looking, almond-shaped eyes. They move in slow motion, if they move at all.

Well, just because somebody in Hollywood decided that aliens should look like that doesn't mean that's what they
really
look like. No, when Pep opened her eyes and glimpsed the alien for the first time, she saw a creature that was completely different from what she expected.

Picture this . . .

A round, doughy creature, about the size of a portable refrigerator. It had very small legs and feet with
no pinky toes. At the end of each arm was a “hand” that was sort of a cross between a claw and a pair of pliers. The alien was wearing some sort of robe that changed color every few seconds.

The alien's face was a wonder to behold. It had two eyes (which shouldn't be taken for granted outside our solar system), but they were
red
. The eyes popped out slightly from the head, and they were all the more noticeable because the creature did not have any visible eyebrows or eyelashes. Or eyelids, for that matter. The eyes could not be closed, which made them even more frightening.

Its nose looked much like ours, but the alien had a wide, lipless, sunken mouth with one golden tooth in the middle. The other teeth appeared to have hair on them.

The alien had no external ears.

Unlike your typical Hollywood alien, this one had hair on its head—a patch of yellow-, black-, orange-, and red-patterned hair that glowed in the dark.

The skin, if you could call it skin, was reddish and translucent—much like fish scales. It appeared to be slimy to the touch, if one were to be so inclined to reach out and touch it.

Got all that? A few pages from now you'll probably forget the description, which is fine. Just remember
this—it was a
hideous
-looking creature.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Pep shrieked.

It was a scream that seemed to go on forever. If the twins had not been confined inside a sealed, soundproof enclosure, Pep would have been heard for miles in each direction.

Everything went dark again.

“Did you see
that
?”

“No, see what?” her brother replied. “I was facing the other way.”

“It was like . . . an alien. Or something.”

“You're hallucinating,” Coke told his sister.

“I saw him!” Pep insisted. “Or it. Or whatever it was. It must have taken a picture of us with that flash of light.”

“There's no such thing as aliens,” Coke scoffed.

“Oh, I suppose we just got sucked up off the ground in Roswell, New Mexico, by a mysterious light that doesn't exist in our color spectrum, and aliens had nothing to do with it?”

“I'll believe it when I see it with my own eyes,” Coke said firmly.

At that moment the light flashed on again, and this time it stayed on.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Coke and Pep shrieked simultaneously. Instinctively, they clung to each other
for dear life. They were shaking, shivering. Their hearts were beating rapidly.

The alien didn't move, or make a sound, or react in any way.

“D-do you believe me
now
?” Pep asked, staring at the thing. “You're crushing my neck!”

Still terrified, Coke relaxed his grip on his sister, never taking his eyes off the creature on the other side of the bars.

“Did you ever hear of the Fermi Paradox?” he whispered.

“Of course not,” Pep whispered back. “Only nerds like you know stuff like that.”

Coke ignored that remark. The alien hadn't moved.

“Our galaxy has been around for billions of years,” Coke whispered. “And there are billions of stars like our sun in the galaxy. And a lot of those stars must have Earth-like planets circling around them. So the Fermi Paradox asks, ‘Where is everybody?' With all those billions of planets out there capable of supporting life, humans have never seen evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

“Until now,” Pep whispered, staring at the alien.

“I always said I wouldn't believe in anything that I couldn't see with my own eyes,” Coke whispered. “But now I see it.”

The creature had yet to make a move. It almost seemed like a statue. The twins' heartbeats slowed down just a little. The longer the creature sat there without doing anything, the less threatening it seemed.

“Do you think it's alive?” Pep whispered. “Maybe it's dead.”

“Or maybe it's just watching us, and listening to us,” Coke said softly. “Examining us.”

“I doubt it can comprehend our language,” Pep said, giving a little wave with her hand before speaking directly to the alien. “My name is Pep. This is my brother. His name is Coke. This is my head. This is called a nose. These are my ears.”

She was speaking very clearly and slowly as she pointed to each body part, as if she was trying to communicate with someone from a foreign country. The alien had no reaction. Its eyes did not move.

“Don't waste your breath,” Coke told her. “He doesn't understand English. Who even knows if he perceives sound waves the way we do?”

“How do you even know it's a
he
?” Pep asked. “Maybe she's a girl.”

“No woman could be that ugly,” Coke replied. “Anyway, maybe he has some other way of communicating. Or maybe he doesn't communicate at all.”

“
All
living creatures communicate,” Pep said. “At least the living creatures on Earth do.”

“Hey, stupid!” Coke suddenly shouted at the alien. “Do you understand me
now
? You're a moron, you know that? An idiot! You don't have any brains!”

“Stop it!” Pep warned her brother. “If he
does
understand anything, you're going to make him mad.”

“So what?” Coke said. “Let him get mad! At least then he'll react. This guy is boring. Talking to this guy is like talking to a brick wall. Why don't you say something, you jerk! You're a dope!
Do
something! See, he doesn't understand a word I'm saying.”

At that moment, the creature's lipless, sunken mouth opened ever so slightly. A sound came out.

“Flog slab,” it said.

“D
id you hear
that
?” Pep said excitedly. “He
spoke
!”

“I didn't hear anything,” Coke said. “What did he say?”

“It sounded like
frog slab
,” Pep said, “or something like that.”

“Flog slab,” repeated the alien.

“He said it
again
!” Pep shouted.

“It's not
frog slab
,” said her brother. There was an
L
sound in there. Like,
flog slllllab
.”

The twins tried to figure out what
flog slab
could possibly mean.

“Maybe
flog slab
is his
name
,” Pep guessed. “Flog Slab. It's kinda cute, actually.”

“That's a pretty weird name,” Coke said.

“Well, what do you expect an alien from another planet to be named?” asked his sister. “Bob?”

“We haven't established with certainty that he's from another planet,” Coke told her. “He could be in disguise. This could all be a hoax. Maybe we're in the middle of some reality TV show. They just want to freak us out to get a reaction.”

“So as I was saying,” Pep said to the alien. “My name is Pep. Pepsi McDonald, to be specific. We're twins. We're thirteen years old. We live in California. We're on a cross-country trip.”

Coke looked around to see if there might be a camera crew hiding behind him. As he did, two more aliens came out of the shadows and positioned themselves on either side of the first alien. One was slightly bigger than the first one, and one was slightly smaller. Other than that, they looked similar.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Pep shrieked. “There are
three
of them!”

She leaped into her brother's arms and hid her face so she wouldn't have to look at them.