My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord (17 page)

“Two Earth minutes
to launch,”
declared the Overlord over the public address system.
“First positions, please.”

“What are we doing
here
?” asked Christopher Talbot, surveying the rows of glass cases that lined the school entrance foyer. He shivered and retied his bathrobe more tightly. I hadn't noticed how cold it was the last time I'd visited. “Your plan is to turn off the alien broadcast, yes? Well, genius, all the important buttons are three decks above us in the ICT classroom.”

“This is the aliens' trophy room,” I said, steering him to the nearest case.

He inspected the contents of the case, then looked around. “Are these all . . . ?”

I nodded. “Remote controls from every planet they've conquered. Hundreds of them.” We came to the heart of my plan. “Link all of them together and you create a massive infrared blast. One powerful enough to turn off the aliens' TV signal and stop the broadcast.”

Christopher Talbot's brow creased in thought, and then a small smile appeared on his lips. “You know,” he said, “that might actually work.”

“There's just one thing.” I removed the glass lid and lifted out the remote inside. I pulled off the back cover and showed him the empty compartment. “No batteries.”

A look of understanding slid across his face like the sun rising. I didn't need to say any more. Like Superman, sent to Earth for a reason; like Batman, driven by his demons to save Gotham City, at last Christopher Talbot understood his purpose. He straightened and puffed out his chest. “This looks like a job for . . . the Energizer.”

“I thought he was the Quintessence,” whispered Serge.

Christopher Talbot moved wordlessly to the center of the room and, with a great grasping motion like he was pulling down the sky, summoned his superpower.

Electricity crackled from his fingertips. He stuck out one hand, and a jagged bolt reached through the nearest glass case to touch the remote control inside. Instantly, the device flew up, shattering the glass and settling into a midair hover. Its power button glowed like an eye opening.

With a cry that tingled to the distant ceiling, Christopher Talbot unleashed the full power of thirty-six golf cart batteries from 1990. The lightning charge leaped from case to case, ripping through the room. And one by one the remote controls sprang to life. Could a TV remote be alive? Looking around, it seemed to me as if an army of the defeated had stirred from their slumber and, sensing a chance to take revenge on their conquerors, risen with a single purpose. They smashed their glass prisons and whirled through the air in what at first appeared to be crazy orbits. I ducked as a pulsing remote shot narrowly over my head.

At the center of the spinning chaos, Christopher Talbot stood tall, directing the air traffic with grand orchestral gestures. And then at last I saw that all of the TV remotes were gradually forming into a grand fleet of handheld devices.

“Luke!” he yelled. “You and your friends have to leave.”

“We will,” I said. “As soon as you shut down the broadcast.”

He guided the last handful of stray remotes into the main cluster. “No. I have to stay here,” he said. “To make sure it works.”

That wasn't the plan. “S.C.A.R.F. doesn't leave anyone behind.”

He laughed. “I was never officially made a member of your superhero team, remember?” He glanced at the others. “I'm not sure I would have gotten in on a vote.”

I started to say that I would have voted for him when he cut me off. “The comic store. I want you to have it.” I didn't understand. What was he talking about?

“You'll find the deeds under my futon. Between the pages of
Uncanny X-Men
, issue one hundred and thirty-six.”

It was a gesture of friendship, and yet I felt an unexpected rush of anger, as if he'd betrayed me all over again. As if he'd known even before setting foot in the Hall of Remotes that he wouldn't be leaving, and had kept it a secret from me.

“I got you into this,” I said. “I'll get you out. I'll come up with a plan. I always do.”

He shook his head. “Not this time.”

“One Earth minute,”
declared the Overlord.

I felt the anger surge again. But now I understood where it came from. Frustration. I'd barely begun to know this Christopher Talbot—and I wanted to know more. Now I'd never get the chance. I couldn't do anything to save him.

He looked at me with a faraway expression. “I've seen an asteroid on fire at the edge of Earth's atmosphere. I've beamed up in a teleporter. I've held alien invaders at bay with my superpower. Not bad for a boy who stayed in his hometown.” The remote control armada was complete. He guided the devices into a firing position. Hundreds of standby lights blinked their readiness. Christopher Talbot smiled. “Good-bye, Luke.” And then his expression hardened. “Now
run
.”

He flared his fingers and began to discharge every last amp of his battery power.

A thousand remotes fired.

Infrared is invisible to the human eye, but this fleet was assembled from devices acquired from strange and distant galaxies where perhaps our laws of physics didn't hold true. Which explained why I was watching a searing pillar of energy shoot from the remotes and tear through the ceiling. The blast rocked the room, throwing me across the floor, knocking the wind from my body. Zack, Serge, and Lara helped me to my feet. Lara had to shout to be heard over the deafening scream of power.

“Let's go!”

As Christopher Talbot continued to power the beam, the overhead lights flickered wildly. At the door I paused to look back. My eyes must have been playing tricks on me, because in the strobing light that fell across his figure, I could have sworn that I saw not a man but a boy. A boy with superpowers flowing from his fingertips.

That was my last sight of him, before Lara hauled me through the doorway.

We hustled along the corridor toward the gym. Cara was waiting for us.

“What happened to the Cara-borg?” asked Lara, as we took our positions at the teleporter.

“She turned out to be really nice, actually,” said Cara. “We had a great chat about academic options for next year. I said I'm taking Italian, and she said she's taking over the world.”

Lara pouted, realizing her sister was pulling her leg. “
So
funny.”

Cara gave a grim smile. “Let's just say she won't be borrowing any more of my clothes.” She cast an eye over the group. “Where's Christopher Talbot?”

I shook my head. I tried to say that he wasn't coming, but the words lodged in my throat. Tears pricked my eyes, and I turned my head away so that they wouldn't see.

The Overlord's voice rumbled over the ship's address system.
“Begin the invasion on my command. We go live in
 . . .
WHAT?!”

There was a great whine from deep within the bowels of the mother ship, and it lurched like a little kid pushed on the playground.

“What's happening? Report!”
In her confusion, the Overlord must have left her microphone on, because we could hear the chaos in the ICT classroom. There were whistles of dismay from the operators.
“What do you mean, someone's trying to turn it
off
?”
the Overlord demanded.
“
The Show
has
never
gone off. Keep transmitting or—AAGH!”

The mother ship bucked again, and this time all the lights went out. A second later the emergency lights kicked in, bathing the gym in a hellish red glow. A frantic alarm sounded. And then, nearby, another. I could hear more in the distance. It felt as if the ship itself was freaking out.

“I think
everything
is shutting down,” said Serge.

It was true. Our feet lifted off the deck as the artificial gravity quit. We floated for a second or two before it restarted and we thudded down again. If the ship's systems continued to fail at this rate, it wouldn't be long before everything went off-line, including the teleports.

I checked the controls. The power supply was weak and erratic, but the touch screen responded. We were still in business, but just barely. I tapped one of the disc icons, and the transporter beam activated. “OK, let's get out of here.” One by one we vaulted into the light. I insisted on leaving last. When it was my turn, the Overlord's voice intruded once again.

“
The Show
must go on! This can't be
 . . .
the end?”
She let out a great howl of pain.
“Star Guy!”
she roared.
“This is your doing!”

Typical,
I thought, just as the teleporter whisked me away.
He always gets the credit.

We beamed back to the men's locker room to find the clubhouse silent and empty. The wedding party was gathered outside on the putting green. I could see too that the road outside the club was filled with people and lights. A TV news camera crew broadcasted live from the scene. Frozen to the spot, all eyes were locked on the night sky. The light had been fading when we left; now it was properly dark. Prime time was here.

High above us, colored lights pulsed on the other side of a thin cloud layer. A monstrous shape parted the clouds. The shining mother ship hurtled down out of the darkness. I could feel the air throb with the shock wave of its passage through the atmosphere. With the ship's internal systems shutting down, its cloaking device had gone haywire. One moment it looked like our school, the next it settled into its real form, a hulking space battleship that made an Imperial Star Destroyer look like a rowboat. More lights in the sky. A pair of F-22 Raptors scrambled by the Air Force roared past on an intercept course. The giant craft ignored them as if they were a couple of insects. It looked unstoppable. The ship blew through the fiery hundred-foot-tall timer, which continued its relentless countdown.

Had Christopher Talbot's sacrifice been in vain?

There were murmurs from the wedding guests. Some of them had just noticed the appearance of Star Guy in their midst. Beside me, my exhausted brother heard them through his fever. They wanted him to do something. He lifted his head and peered up at the fast-approaching ship.

“You can't,” I said. “You're not up to it.”

He gave me a weak smile. “Luke, I have to.”

Before I knew what was happening, he had sprung from the putting green and streaked into the sky. I could tell he was still under the weather, as his trajectory was a bit wobbly.

Millions of tons of battle-hardened mother ship bore down on his tiny figure. But just as it looked as if a collision was inevitable, the ship came to a rapid and complete standstill. Zack was visible against the ship's underside, lit up by its wildly blinking lights. The countdown reached three seconds.

Zack, his force field pulsing, wound up to deliver a blast with his telekinetic superpower. I could feel the crowd around me tense.

Suddenly, there was a sound like a great big sigh, and the mother ship dwindled to a single point of light.

And vanished.

There was a long pause, and then a great cheer went up from the wedding guests.

Zack bobbed up and down in the now empty sky, illuminated by the light cast from the giant burning countdown. It had stopped with two seconds left to run.

“What just happened?”

It was Zack's voice in my head. He'd decided to reestablish our telepathic link. He might have been puzzled at what we'd just witnessed. But I knew.

Christopher Talbot had switched the sue-dunham . . . off.

• • •

The world's media went bonkers speculating about what happened that day. Some said that we'd witnessed the climax of a secret alien war the government had been waging without the knowledge of the general population. A surprising number of others were sure it was a mass hallucination brought on by artificial additives in chips. There were even a few who claimed it was a publicity campaign for Lab Rat Games'
Puny Earthlings!

There was one thing that they could all agree on: Star Guy had saved the world. Again.

As much as it bugged me that my brother was receiving all the recognition, I was more upset at the thought of Christopher Talbot being overlooked. No one would ever know about his heroism. Except for S.C.A.R.F. And that didn't seem fair.

The fumigators left, and school resumed on a damp Monday in October. There was only one topic of conversation in the cafeteria; every table was abuzz with chatter about the recent UFO sighting. All but one. In the only quiet corner sat Serge, Lara, and me.

“He has a sister,” I said. “She should know the truth about what happened.”

“What will you say to her?” asked Lara.

I thought back to the last time I'd seen Christopher Talbot, in the Hall of Remotes. There was only one thing I could say: “Your brother was a superhero.”

There was also the matter of the comic book store. It didn't seem fair that he'd left it to me when he had family of his own. Then I discovered that it wasn't like he'd left me something valuable. The rent was three months overdue, and the bank was about to take all of the store's stock. I figured his sister wasn't missing out on anything.

When school finished, I found Dad waiting at the gates. He didn't usually come to meet me, but since losing his job he'd invented new ways to fill his day. We strolled home through the park together.

“How was school?” he asked.

Things had definitely improved. Now that Josh Khan knew I was friends with Dark Flutter, he had stopped picking on me. But despite overcoming the alien menace, I still found school overwhelming, and there was this knot in my stomach that wouldn't go away. I think Dad could tell.

“What you've got to remember is that all you see of people is what's on the outside,” he said.

“Like their masks and capes?”

“Yeah. I suppose, in a way, everyone looks like a superhero from the outside. Like they've got life figured out. But inside, trust me, they're all a bundle of insecurities, all worried about the same things.
What do I do now? Am I doing it right? Will they laugh at me?
”

“Is my superpower a bit lame?”

“Exactly.”

My dad was no Yoda, but sometimes he came up with useful advice like this. There was something I wanted to ask him. I'd been thinking about Christopher Talbot a lot, and I needed answers. “Good and evil,” I said. “It's kind of like a seesaw, isn't it?”

“Uh, I'm not sure I follow . . .”

“Well, when you're young it's really simple: there are goodies and baddies, right? But when you grow up, you find out that sometimes goodies can go bad, and baddies can become good again, even right at the end.”

“That's called redemption.”

“So, does redemption make you feel good, even if you've been evil for a long time?”

“I think that's the idea.”

I hoped so. I hoped that Christopher Talbot's redemption made him feel happy at the end.

The conversation turned to the UFO. Dad rattled on about it with as much excitement as any of the kids at school. He might be ancient, but he was still a fanboy at heart. That got me thinking.

“Dad,” I began, as we swung past the duck pond, “have you ever thought about opening a comic book store?”

• • •

Zack bounced back to full health, which meant that in the unlikely event of the aliens returning, Star Guy would be ready to rumble. And this time he swore he wouldn't fall for any robot girl distraction. I knew he was sincere, because I could tell when he was lying. Like when he learned that Matthias and Cara weren't getting back together, and Zack said that was a real shame, what with Matthias being such a nice guy. Well, that was a big fat fib.

More importantly, Mom and Dad returned my Xbox. Now, you might think that almost bringing about the end of the world by playing
Puny Earthlings!
would count as some dreadful learning moment, and that in an act of newfound maturity I would have refused the gift. But you'd be wrong. I'd just be more careful in the future. Anyway, I didn't have as much time to play video games, not with my new S.C.A.R.F. commitments.

After witnessing firsthand how Serge and I performed aboard the mother ship, Zack and Lara agreed to let us help them with their future superhero exploits. S.C.A.R.F. was well and truly activated.