License to Thrill (3 page)

“Flog slab,” said all three aliens. They stared at the
twins with piercing red eyes.

“I don't like this!” Pep moaned, tears running down her cheeks. “They've got us outnumbered now. I want to get out of here.”

“Flog slab,” said the first alien.

“Flog slab,” said the second alien.

“Flog slab,” said the third alien.

“Maybe they're a family,” Coke said, trying to look on the bright side.

“And maybe the family is going to kill us!” Pep shouted. “Maybe they're going to do bizarre medical experiments on us first, and
then
kill us.”

“You watch too many science fiction movies,” Coke said. “Maybe they're friendly.”

“Let us go!” Pep shouted at the aliens. “Let us out of this place!”

“We mean no harm,” Coke said, holding his hands up and making a
V
sign with his fingers. “Let us live in peace.”

“Flog slab flog slab flog slab,” chanted the aliens.

The aliens droned on and on. Coke closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to block out the sound.

“Stop saying that!” he hollered. “They're driving me crazy! It's some form of mind control! Make it stop!”

“Flog slab flog slab flog slab flog
slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab.”

The aliens appeared to be excited now, as if they had made some connection with the two Earth children behind the bars. Their chanting picked up a little speed. There was urgency in it. It continued droning on in the background as Coke and Pep tried to figure out what they should do.

“
Flog slab
probably doesn't mean
anything
,” Coke guessed. “Maybe it's just a random noise they make. Like cows moo, cats meow, ducks quack, and these guys flog slab.”

“Flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab flog slab.”

The chanting was getting louder and more insistent. Each of the three aliens was saying “flog slab” in a slightly different tone, creating a haunting, harmonic effect that served to calm the twins' nerves and put them into an almost hypnotic state.

It had been a long day, and now it was getting late. Coke and Pep were exhausted from their experience, and the droning sound of “flog slab” was like a mantra. A spell. After a short period of time, both of them lay their heads on the floor, closed their eyes, and fell into a deep slumber.

As soon as the twins were asleep, the three aliens stopped chanting and scurried around on their little feet. One of them opened the bars that had separated them from Coke and Pep. The others wheeled in two long, metal tables. Seemingly with no effort, they lifted Coke and Pep onto the tables and rolled them into the next room.

It was an amazing place—there was a wall made from hundreds of video screens of every size, from postage stamp to big-screen TV. There were no knobs, dials, or switches anywhere, like you would expect in a high-tech hospital or airplane cockpit. Every screen was controlled by touching it, which the aliens did with amazing dexterity and speed.

In the middle of the room was a large, white machine that resembled the devices hospitals use to shoot magnetic resonance images of patients. It was, in fact, very much like an MRI machine, but much,
much
more powerful. While the twins slept, the tables they lay on were wheeled into this machine. One of the aliens touched a screen on the wall, and a purplish band of light shone on Coke, then Pep. The light, accompanied by an otherworldly humming sound, traveled up and down their bodies like a scanner or photocopy machine. Then it stopped and repeated the procedure a second time, in the opposite direction.

For centuries, scientists have been trying to unlock the mysteries of the human brain. Why are some people “smarter” than others? What causes autism, dyslexia, and other learning disabilities? They want to find out what makes us “tick.” It's as if our brains were the innards of an old grandfather clock, and we could watch and see how the gears, wheels, and complicated mechanisms ultimately make the clock's hands go around.

Just one little problem: The human brain is made of eighty-five to a hundred
billion
neurons and neural pathways. They're constantly growing, changing, and dying off. It would take three
petabytes
of storage to capture the amount of information generated by just one
million
neurons in a year. The brain generates 300,000 petabytes of data each year.

Even with the powerful computers we have, our best neuroscientists haven't come close to figuring out exactly how the human brain functions. It's far more complicated than sequencing the human genome.

Someday, perhaps in your lifetime, it will be possible to record every single neuron in the brain and create a comprehensive BAM—brain activity map. Scientists will be able to peer inside a person's head
and see exactly what he or she is thinking, feeling, and planning at any moment in time. It might be as easy as taking an X-ray, or glancing at your smartphone.

The aliens, possessing a far more sophisticated intelligence than our own, had figured out a way to reverse-engineer the human brain. They knew how to use powerful lasers and nano-robots to measure the activity of neurons in a brain's cortex. They learned how to create and connect billions of virtual neurons together in a network of simulated waves that worked just like a real brain. And once they had mastered that, they sent these three ambassadors to Earth to see if it worked on humans.

Using a technology we can't even begin to understand, the three hideous-looking creatures installed a virtual “sensor mesh” of 364 electrodes on the surface of Coke's and Pep's brain. Upon the touch of a screen, the information was extracted, copied, and analyzed. Coke and Pep didn't feel a thing. Their skin was never broken.

While the twins slept, a complete map of their brains was downloaded into the alien computer system.

It took about thirty seconds.

A
t this point, you're probably wondering when Coke is going to get thrown into a volcano. Be patient, dear reader. Good things come to those who wait. We're only in chapter 5.

While Coke slept, the neurons in his brain kept firing. The result was a dream that was almost like a movie in his head. It looked like this . . .

Beautiful summer day. Coke and Pep were floating on inflatable pool rafts in the middle of a lake. There were
no boats in sight. They didn't have a care in the world.

Then, suddenly, the peace was disturbed by a faraway noise—the sound of a motor, possibly a small boat. Coke looked up. In the distance, he could see two tiny dots.

“What's going on?” Pep asked.

“Sounds like motorboats.”

But the dots were
not
motorboats. They were Jet Skis. And they were heading directly toward the twins.

Pep waved her arms to signal the drivers. But they didn't seem to notice.

“I don't have a good feeling about this,” Pep said.

As the Jet Skis drew closer, the twins could see that two men were driving them. Two men wearing bowler hats.

“Bowler dudes at twelve o'clock!” Coke shouted.

“They're gonna run us down!” Pep screamed.

“Jump!” Coke shouted.

He could see the bowler dudes' faces, snickering and giggling like idiots. He took a deep gulp of air and dove off his raft at the last possible instant before the Jet Ski would have rammed him. It passed
right over, ripping the raft to shreds. Coke struggled to swim back to the surface.

“Oooh, missed him by
that
much!” cackled the mustachioed bowler dude.

“This is
fun
!” shouted his clean-shaven brother. “We should do water sports more often!”

As Coke's head bobbed above the surface, he saw Pep, treading water and gasping for breath. Her raft had also been destroyed.

“They're trying to kill us!” she shouted.

The Jet-Skiing bowler dudes were circling around, gunning their engines for another attack.

“They're coming back!” Pep screamed.

“Get underwater!” Coke shouted, before filling his lungs with air.

The bowler dudes came roaring back, aiming their Jet Skis for the two heads bobbing in the water. Once again, the twins dove below the surface at the last second, avoiding certain death.

“It's like Whac-A-Mole, but with people!” shouted the clean-shaven bowler dude as he passed by the spot where Pep's head had been a moment earlier.

Coke and Pep stayed underwater as long as they could hold their breath. When they surfaced, a large yacht was approaching from the west. It cruised to a stop. There was a woman standing at the rail.

“Mrs. Higgins!” Coke shouted.

Yes, it was Mrs. Audrey Higgins, their germaphobic health teacher. She reached a hand down for Coke and Pep to climb aboard the yacht, and gave each of them a towel.

“You saved our lives!” Pep marveled. “Why? You
hate
us. You've been trying to kill us ever since you locked us in the detention room and burned the school down.”

“Well, I didn't want
those
idiots to kill you,” Mrs. Higgins replied matter-of-factly, “because I wanted to do it
myself
!”

It took a moment for Mrs. Higgins's words to sink in. It also took a moment for the colorless, sweet-smelling liquid she had soaked the towels in to take effect. But very soon, Coke and Pep were feeling lightheaded.

“What's that smell?” Coke asked.

“I think . . . I'm going to . . . pass out,” said Pep.

“It's my favorite scent—chloroform,” said Mrs. Higgins. “It increases the movement of potassium ions through the nerve cells, which serves to depress your central nervous system. The result will be cardiac arrhythmia. Don't worry, in a few minutes you won't smell a thing. Because you'll be
dead
.”

Clearly, she was insane.

Unbeknownst to Mrs. Higgins, a helicopter had
landed at the other side of her yacht. While she was busy poisoning the twins with chloroform, the helicopter pilot—a red-haired teenager—had come running over.

“Step aside, you old hag!” he said, shoving Mrs. Higgins overboard.

“Archie Clone!” Pep yelled.

Yes, it was Archie Clone, the teenage supervillain who had attempted to drop them onto the tip of the Washington Monument.

“Come with me!” Archie Clone yelled. “Quickly!”

“I thought you died in Washington!” Coke yelled as he and Pep ran and climbed into the passenger side of the helicopter. It had no door on it.

“You thought wrong,” Archie Clone replied. He grabbed the controls and the chopper lifted off the yacht.

Archie Clone turned the helicopter and pointed it toward the edge of the lake. Soon the twins could see land passing below. Archie Clone slowed the chopper and hovered over what appeared to be a junkyard. He descended to ten feet. The twins couldn't see what was below.