The Rise and Fall of El Solo Libre Read online

  “BOO! BOOO!”

  Herbert looked around. Alex and Sammi heard it, too. They glanced down into the front row, directly beneath the TransPodium. Standing there giving them a nasty look was a shabby, mean-looking G’Dalien with a terrible attitude. It was GOR-DON, the bitter blob whose evil plot they’d foiled earlier that summer. He was pulling flyers out of a soiled bag draped over his shoulder and handing them to people who clearly didn’t want them. He wore a stained T-shirt.

  “That’s right! BOO! SERIOUSLY, BOO!!! Listen to me! The AlienSlayers are phonies! They’re fakes! I have proof—BEHOLD!”

  He pulled out of his bag a beat-up old cardboard box. Herbert recognized it immediately. Sammi gasped. Special Agent Illinois dove into action.

  “HE’S GOING FOR A WEAPON! M.O.M. IN DANGER! SWARM! SWARM!” He tackled Mayor CROM-WELL to the floor of the TransPodium and bounced onto the stumpy G’Dalien’s belly, keeping his balance on top of him as he looked around frantically. Just offstage, GOR-DON was being lifted up by the crowd.

  “AAAUUUGGGHHH!!” the bald G’Dalien yowled. “LET GO OF ME!”

  Herbert and Sammi knew GOR-DON hadn’t pulled out a weapon. He’d pulled out something far more alarming—the box from a 100-year-old AS:3D! video game they’d used to defeat him and trick the entire town of Merwinsville into thinking they were real AlienSlayers.

  Alex spotted it, too, but couldn’t put his finger on what that box reminded him of. There’s something weirdly familiar about this, he thought to himself as he watched the crowd pass GOR-DON back.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! PUT ME DOWN! STOP THIS!” The enraged G’Dalien growled and squirmed, his protests growing fainter and fainter as he bounced over everyone’s head and was finally tossed out onto his blobby butt.

  Mr. Illinois shouted into his sleeve as he rolled off his boss. “ALL CLEAR! M.O.M. IS OUT OF DANGER!”

  Mayor CROM-WELL stumbled to his feet and gathered himself. “That wasn’t on today’s program,” he muttered. He cleared his throat and addressed the crowd again. “Now then! Let the great Flee-aseum groundbreaking begin!”

  The crowd went wild as the TransPodium floated over to a giant golden shovel, its handle as thick as a telephone pole, suspended above the ground. The mayor nodded to Alex, Herbert, and Sammi. The three of them approached the enormous, shiny spade. The mayor led the crowd in a countdown.

  “FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!”

  The AlienSlayers reached out and touched the golden shovel. It began to hum as it automatically sunk into the ground below. The handle opened with a whirr. Metal scaffolding folded out like mechanical arms and began snapping into place. The crowd watched as ramps, stairs, bleachers, and seats self-constructed all around them. Within seconds an entire Flee-a-seum, with seating for tens of thousands, was completed.

  “Okay, I guess that’s it,” the mayor announced. “See you all on Saturday, and remember—gates open at noon, rain or shine. No cans, glass bottles, or coolers of any kind. And don’t forget the sunscreen for your specific flesh type. Thank you, Merwinsville!”

  Mayor CROM-WELL flashed his big wall of teeth. He wrapped his tentacles around the AlienSlayers, waving to the crowd as the TransPodium lifted them up, up, and away, into the blue sky.

  GOR-DON was still fuming angrily to himself as he rode down an empty Main Street in his broken-down floating jalopy.

  His junky scrap-car endlessly announced to no one: “ALIENSLAYERS ARE FAKES! ASK ME HOW I KNOW!” It blared all the way across town, “DON’T BE FOOLED! THE ALIENSLAYERS ARE PHONIES! READ MY PAMPHLET & LEARN THE TRUTH!” The rickety vehicle spewed out flyers, littering the otherwise perfectly spotless street. Small ClutterBots whirred behind him, scooping up the flyers, disintegrating them as soon as they hit the ground, while he continued to the edge of town, toward the Merwinsville Museum of Human History.

  GOR-DON was once head janitor of the museum, but that was before Sammi, Alex, and Herbert ruined his life. He now lived in a small closet in the museum basement. It was from this damp, smelly room that he’d been planning revenge on his archenemies ever since. At least when he wasn’t napping.

  GOR-DON parked his vehicle, entered the basement, and slinked around the huge Trash Disintegration Unit in the center of the floor. He came to a door marked KEEP OUT! TOXIC CONTAMINANT CLOSET!

  “Home sweet home,” he mumbled as he opened the door.

  Inside, the walls were stained, dirty, and bare. The dark, dank room was mostly empty except for a mangy cot, a desk along the wall, and a pile of Andretti’s Pizzeria boxes stacked by the door. GOR-DON shuffled over to the beat-up computer on the desk. He went to switch it on, but stopped to pick up a framed picture.

  It was a photograph of a chubby lady wearing a hairnet, holding up a spatula. GOR-DON sighed before snapping out of his trance. He put the picture down and switched on the computer.

  The screen gave the room an even spookier green glow, and a built-in projection unit atop the monitor blinked to life. GOR-DON stood back to look at the projected display now on the blank wall. A gallery of pictures, articles, and video clips floated before him like a big collage. Each one was a story about the same subject.

  He seethed at all the happy stories about his enemies.

  “All of these do-goody events just make everyone love them more…. I must find a way to expose them for what they are…”

  Beep! The computer’s soothing voice interrupted his scheming with an announcement. “You’ve got issues! New item on topic of your unhealthy obsession. Accept or decline?”

  “Accept,” GOR-DON spat.

  An image of Herbert, Alex, and Sammi standing on the TransPodium with Mayor CROM-WELL popped up. The headline read: “ALIENSLAYERS HELP MAYOR KICK OFF GREAT G’DALIEN FLEE-FESTIVAL!” Beneath it, in smaller type, it said: “Local Crackpot Makes Fool of Himself Again, Gets Tossed Out on Blobby Butt…”

  “AARRGGH!!”

  The angry G’Dalien ex-janitor flew into a rage.

  He rushed the wall and punched the projected picture. His balled-up tentacle slammed into solid metal with a CRUNCH!

  “Owweeeee!”

  GOR-DON flopped onto the desk and blew on his throbbing fist. He opened his eyes and glanced at the wall of holo-clippings. Noticing something, he sat up. He reached out to the new article and enlarged the AlienSlayer picture. There was a good-looking boy in a baseball cap happily working behind the AlienSlayers.

  GOR-DON moved the new picture aside and zoomed in on another. There was Chicago again, this time crouching behind them so that photographers could get a shot of the AlienSlayers. In still another, he spotted Chicago in the background, looking at a schedule on his holographic wristwatch.

  GOR-DON excitedly flipped through the pictures faster and faster, sliding them around and zooming in on them. In almost every one, he found Chicago.

  As he smiled, his craggy, yellow teeth glowed in the light of the projections.

  “I think perhaps it’s time the little man behind the superstars got some ‘special’ attention,” he sneered.

  GOR-DON began to laugh louder and louder, until his desk shook and finally gave way beneath his hefty, jiggling belly.

  Chicago held the door open to the SlayerLair for Alex, Herbert, and Sammi and congratulated them as they entered.

  “Had to be your biggest crowd ever. I’ll get the numbers and let you guys know.”

  Sammi watched Chicago punch away at his wristwatch.

  “It’s nice that the G’Daliens are celebrating their friendship with humans,” she said. “But I don’t get why they’re proud of how they gave up their home planet and ran from a bunch of space bullies.”

  “Yeah,” said Alex. “I wish that rather than reenact how they wussed out, they’d invite those Cashmerians to that coliseum for real, so we could kick their butts, AlienSlayer-style!”

  “It’s Klapthorians,” Old Man Herbert said. He was floating in his AirChair, making some much-needed attitude adjustments to SarcasmaTron. “It’s an im
portant part of their history.”

  Alex turned his attention to Old Man Herbert. “Speaking of history, since you’re Herbert, you’ve already gone through this. You must know what happens to us. What’s the deal? Do we ever get to fight aliens again?”

  The 110-year-old inventor turned his AirChair around to face Alex. “It doesn’t work that way. Unlike you three, I reached this exact moment one day at a time, one month at a time, one year at a time. In short, I did it ‘old school,’ as the kids used to say. I aged.”

  “Okay,” Alex said. “So you didn’t go through a wormhole like we did. But you still came from the same place, before the wormhole.” His face lit up suddenly. “Which means you had to have known me! So what happened to me? Where’d my old-guy version end up?”

  There was a long pause. “This is not a wise conversation to have,” Young Herbert suddenly said. “We should stop.”

  “What?!”

  Alex jumped to his feet and marched straight at Herbert. “So you get a cool old dude version of yourself but I don’t? What’s that, another one of your ‘pre-agreed terms’?!”

  Before Herbert could answer, Chicago broke in excitedly.

  “Hey, great news, you guys! I just spoke with a reporter from the Total Universal Inside Access: Merwinsville! show, and they want to talk to me about an exclusive AlienSlayer interview! Isn’t that great?”

  “Uh, no offense,” Sammi said. “But why do they want to meet with you?”

  “She said she wanted to get some background info before the interview, from the ‘hero behind the heroes.’ That’s me! Awesome, right?!”

  “Yeah. Awesome,” Sammi said, trying not to sound disappointed. “I guess we can grab pizza and ice cream some other time.”

  “Oh! I totally forgot. But let’s face it—this is a little more important than pizza and ice cream, am I right? See you guys! I’ve gotta go change my shirt—maybe I’ll be on TV!”

  Chicago ran out of the room, leaving an awkward silence, until Alex cleared his throat. “Hey, I’ll go grab some pizza with you if—”

  “Forget it,” Sammi said, storming over to the smoothie bar. “I’m not hungry anyway.” She ordered a smoothie—for one—and slumped into a seat. Alex watched her. He seemed annoyed, and looked like he wanted to say something.

  “Why is it so important to you to find you?” Herbert asked.

  “Maybe I’m curious, okay?” Alex snapped back at Herbert. “Maybe I just wanna know how I turned out! Maybe I’m hoping to find a real partner to help me protect this city!”

  They all stopped and looked at Alex. He looked around. Even he seemed surprised for a second. But only for a second. “Yeah. I said it. ’Cause it’s true—neither of you take alien slaying seriously anymore! Herbert’s only concerned with his little science experiments, and Sammi’s just hanging around waiting for her little pizza and ice cream dream date!”

  An entire smoothie splattered against the wall, very close to Alex’s head. Sammi walked across the SlayerLair, past Alex, and straight up to Old Man Herbert. She looked angrier than they’d ever seen her.

  “Mr. Slewg, if you know anything about what happened to the older version of me, good or bad, please keep it to yourself. I’d rather not know.”

  She turned and stared daggers at Alex. Then she walked out of the room.

  “Geez,” Herbert said. “And I thought I was supposed to be the jerky one.”

  “HEY!” Alex suddenly shot back. “Don’t you ever talk about her that way, do you hear me?!”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else I’ll pound you in that fat brain of yours, that’s what!”

  “Without this fat brain, you wouldn’t even be here!”

  “Without that fat brain, you wouldn’t be here!”

  “That makes precisely zero sense!”

  “You make precisely…negative zero sense!”

  “That is a numeric impossibility!”

  “ENOUGH!” Old Man Herbert zipped over and floated between them. He took a deep breath to calm himself. “Listen to me. The three of you are like electrons bound to the same nucleus—you’re apt to bang against one another now and again. This causes friction. But friction is the source of great energy.”

  “Spare me the science lecture, old dude,” Alex said rudely.

  “I’m just saying you’re lucky to have each other as friends, that’s all. Take my word for it. I know.”

  Alex approached Old Man Herbert. “You know a lot of stuff, don’t you?” he said, studying the elderly genius. “Like what happened to me.”

  The 110-year-old scientist glanced over at his younger self, then turned back to face Alex. He took a deep breath. “What happened to you isn’t any big secret. In fact, there was a time when you were kind of famous.”

  Alex’s eyes grew wide. He grinned as he plopped into a big squishy chair.

  “It’s important to understand that my memories aren’t the same as yours,” old man Herbert said. “The instant you went through the wormhole, you split off from my reality and created a completely different parallel-event path.”

  “Just so you guys know, I’m already confused,” Alex said.

  “It isn’t complicated,” Herbert explained. “There are two co-existing versions of our lives. There’s the one we live—we were neighbors, blasted through a wormhole, and arrived here.”

  “And then there’s the one I live,” Old Man Herbert said. “We were neighbors, we didn’t find a wormhole, and lived a long, long time to get here.”

  Alex gave Old Man Herbert a concerned look. “In your version, we weren’t…friends or anything, were we?”

  “Far from it. Our mothers forced us to have a playdate together. It was a disaster. We had nothing in common.”

  “Whew,” Alex and Herbert sighed together.

  “Until we met Sammi.”

  The two looked at Old Man Herbert.

  “We put on the N.E.D. suits I’d invented and went to Alex’s backyard to play on his new jungle gym. We found Sammi hiding in the tube slide. She didn’t want to go to her swim meet. Alex was embarrassed to be seen in the N.E.D. suit, so we took them off.”

  “And missed out on discovering the wormhole,” Herbert said to Alex. “Way to go, ignoramus.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Alex said. “It was the umbrella-path version of me.”

  “Parallel-event path,” Old Man Herbert corrected him.

  “Right. That’s what I said.” Alex shot a look at young Herbert. “See? Try paying attention.”

  Old Man Herbert continued. “Alex was eager to come up with fun things to do so Sammi would stay and play with us. I recall he created strange food-related rhyming nicknames. Very odd.”

  “That doesn’t sound like me,” Alex said.

  “Yes, it does,” Herbert shot back.

  “So did we spend a lot of time together?” Alex asked. “Sammi and me, I mean.”

  “No. It was just that one day. The reason I remember it so well is because years later, when all the reporters wanted to know what you were like as a boy, it was the only story I had—a crush on that girl, and food-related rhyming nicknames.”

  “Reporters asked about Alex?” Herbert asked.

  “Was I famous?!” Alex asked.

  “Yes, you might say that,” Old Man Herbert said to both of them. “When I was sixty years old or so, the G’Daliens came down to Earth. They kindly offered to run our planet for us, and allowed the human race to enjoy their vast knowledge and technology. They saved us, and almost everyone loved them.”

  Old Man Herbert looked directly at Alex. “You’ll notice I said ‘almost.’”

  “Here we go.” Herbert smiled as he settled in.

  “I’m confused again,” Alex said.

  “You—or rather, my parallel-event-path version of you—were scared witless of the G’Daliens. And you were very vocal about it. You’d rant on and on to anyone who would listen, and many who wouldn’t. You were sure the G’Daliens weren’t here
to help us, but to eat us. You’d talk loudly on buses, give inappropriate toasts at children’s birthday parties, and eventually were banned from every karaoke restaurant in Merwinsville.”

  “But—some of my best friends are G’Daliens,” Alex said.

  “The media called you ‘Fraidy-Cat Filby.’ They made fun of you on all the TV shows and in the papers—your paranoid buffoonery was blasted on MonitOrbs all over Merwinsville. As your next-door neighbor, I was constantly interviewed. Everyone wanted to know if you were a strange child growing up. I had to say yes. I mean, rhyming food nicknames? Who does that?”

  Herbert was beaming. “This makes perfect sense. When we first came through the wormhole, you were terrified of G’Daliens. You hid behind me, hoping they’d eat me first.”

  “Interesting,” Old Man Herbert said. He studied Alex as if he were in a test tube. “You and Fraidy-Cat Filby had the same fearful tendencies. I’m fascinated with intersecting traits in parallel-event-path selves.”

  “Okay,” Alex snapped angrily. “So what happened to me? Did they lock me up or something?”

  “No one knows. After a year of failing to get anyone to join your Anti-G’Dalien League, one day you just went away. Vanished. That was nearly fifty years ago. No one’s seen or heard from you since.”

  Alex got very quiet.

  “So…the old man version of me could be anywhere. I’ll never find myself.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to think about it that way,” Herbert offered. “Look on the bright side—maybe you’re dead!”

  Old Man Herbert watched Alex for a moment. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” he said.

  Alex looked up at him. Young Herbert stopped grinning.

  “Before you three showed up, before I even knew my parallel self existed, I began having this odd feeling, like there was something I couldn’t quite remember. It grew stronger and stronger, until one day I found myself on the rooftop of Andretti’s Pizzeria, looking inside an old, rusty air vent. I don’t even like pizza. But I knew where my parallel-event-path self—you, Herbert—would hide something for me to find. And there it was. My first glimpse into intersecting event paths.”