Plus One, Minus One

Plus One, Minus One

a story by Mycroft Stone

Green Street School

I dedicate this book to you for reading it.

Maple Leaf Book Writing Project

Brattleboro VT

Copyright 2013

It was the year of 2864. The last time this happened was well...never. Our planet's solar system had never spun through the Milky-Way like a ball of lint spinning down a drain.

When it started, scientists thought the solar system was being sucked into a black hole. It wasn't though, the orbit went crazy. Our planet spun out of our solar system. Scientists didn’t know how, it just did. The people panicked.

One day, there was a massive earthquake. Following the bizarre tremor, strange noises started coming over the TV and satellites stopped working. People started getting even more hysterical. Scientists were trying to figure out how to get 8,000 of their satellites working again, when one of their monitors started pulsing red light. This monitor showed the surface of a strange alien planet. Then, the monitor blacked out as the telescope satellite struck the face of the odd landscape.

.

“Oh no! We’ve struck another planet!”a reporter yelled.

“Is it inhabited?” Everyone was scurrying everywhere and asking this one question: IS THIS PLANET INHABITED? The grand council voted to send a probe to see if anything lived on the dented globe. What they saw on the probe’s monitor amazed them. The inhabitants of the strange planet had intelligence, cities, vehicles, and were roughly the same size as us.

“What are they called?”

“How will we communicate?”

“Will we get into a war?” everyone questioned themselves.

Over the next few years, people from both planets started complaining about gravity and how it was two times as powerful, now that the mass of the two planets was bigger. People also started getting crabby because the monopoly company Shnoodol ©, the manufacturer of the Vee-Cee (the new 4-E-D Telecam entertainment communicator,) and the IlumaBook™ had been on the part of the planet that had gotten squished and nobody could get a new Vee-Cee. The existing Vee-Cees had a hard time broadcasting and receiving because the neighboring planet used the same frequencies.

* * *

A girl was walking past a building and noticed it was tipped on its side and crumbling to dust. That’s odd, she thought. I thought that the earthquake was just in my forest. You see, this girl, named Lucy, was an orphan. Her parents died as they were bringing her home from the school one day. Their car’s hovering device had stopped working, and it had thumped noisily against the road and skittered into a tree killing all of the people in it but one. That one person was Lucy. She had been so traumatized that she stopped speaking and started to live in the woods. She also didn’t have any money. Now being a broke, mute, orphaned nine year old has its disadvantages at times. This was one of them.

.

Here are three reasons why it is bad to be broke at a time like this:

• If you don’t have any money, you can’t buy a Vee-Cee to get the news. .
• Even if you had money, you couldn’t buy a Vee-Cee because of what happened.
• You wouldn’t know what happened unless you had a Vee-Cee. .

All things considered, Lucy was in a pretty bad situation. She had thought the earthquake had only been a town shaking menace. She had been walking away from the forest. The forest had been knocked down and so she ran away from it. She ran away so she would not be caught and dragged away to the orphanage. The ORPHANAGE. A shiver ran down her spine. There can’t be a worse place. It was true. If your life called for adventure, that was the worst place to be. The way she was thinking, it reminded her of a fairy tale that was as old as the world itself. The fairy tale: Peiteer Panns. It was about a boy who didn’t have a family and didn’t even want one. But, Lucy thought, I’m not like that. I want a family more than the world. All of this went through her head in the second she was staring at the crumbled building. Then, she set off again.

She hadn’t gone too far when she saw another building. It was a house. It looked dilapidated but it wasn’t like the last building. It looked worse. It looked as if the weight of 2,000 elephants mashed into one landed in top it.

Plip! A raindrop fell on her head. Uh-oh, she thought, if I don’t make a shelter now, I might catch a cold. She started dragging some wood from the house to make a shelter. As she did this, she found that under the house, there was a garden. Lucy salivated. Gozzleberries! Just looking at the berries made her have a flashback. She was in her own garden with her mom picking the transparent heart-shaped fruit. Well, her mom was picking the gozzleberries, but Lucy was happily popping the plump morsels in her mouth and singing a little tune that she had learned at kindercare:

“The plants are green and grow so strong but oh-no, they won’t be here for long. For winter is coming the plants will all die but they will still be here in my minds eye!”

“SQUAAK!” a bird made her jump out of her daydream. She picked all of the berries in the garden and put them in her backpack. She finished the shelter. It was a beautiful work of art. She went in and immediately fell asleep.

The next morning, Lucy got up and started walking again. The rain did not let up. For three weeks, Lucy had the same schedule, day and night: walk most of the day and look at all of the buildings, make a shelter when it gets dark, and go to sleep.

One day, as she was walking she saw a gigantic shadow. What could be that big? She wondered. In the shadow, she noticed that nothing was growing. Not even the common grass. “…and if there’s no sunlight, nothing will grow.” Her old science teacher haunted her.

Her science teacher. Back when Lucy wasn’t crazy. But I’m not crazy, I still remember the homework assignment that was given on the tragic day. It was: read chapters 5-7 of Why Isn’t the Sun Artificial Yet? and answer the study questions. In fact, I think I still have my homework in my backpack. She was right. She still had her IlumaBook™. She gathered up all the courage she could muster and stepped into the shadow.

Suddenly, everything was as black as night. If only I had a

Vee-Cee, she thought, they’re really bright. Then, an idea struck her. She took out her IlumaBook™ and turned it on. Everything within a yard of her was bathed in a white light. She looked up. It wasn’t raining in the shadow. Actually, it was like being in a cave. Then she started walking again.

After two weeks, she came upon a ghost town. In the debris of the town’s store, judging by the dilapidated sign on top, she found a stash of food that would last for about six weeks. She put the food in her backpack and continued on her way.

About four weeks later, she slammed into a wall. Then, as if gravity had shifted, she was laying on the wall. Whoa! She thought, what just happened? What had happened was Lucy had slammed into the other planet and got caught in its gravity force. She got up and looked at what had been the ground. Then, still in the shadow, she carried on walking.

Lucy walked along in the shadow. The only thing letting her see in the pure darkness was the IlumaBook™. She stopped. The dirt here was green. Weird She thought. As she started walking again, she tripped over something warm.

“Yabba ara pir!” the thing yelled. Lucy was shocked. Unless she was going crazy, no one would be out here but her. Then, a very shocked Lucy passed out.

When she awoke she was laying in a room next to a fire. She had to do a double take when she saw the fire was purple. She was lying on a ring of flat rocks around the fire. She sat up and looked around.

“Yukka snort!” said a feminine voice behind her. Lucy turned and saw a hideous creature. She panicked and ran like a crazed animal, banging on everything that looked like an exit. When she was finished, she collapsed on the ground, exhausted and out of breath. I think I should tell you that this “ugly creature” was the scientist that was going to go to the other planet to see the “aliens” when Lucy had stumbled upon her. Lucy had passed out and the alien had taken her to its house.

The being lumbered over to an oddly shaped circular crack in the wall. As the thing pressed on it, it sprung open. In the wall, there was something that made Lucy happy: FOOD!

A pang of hunger struck Lucy. She hadn’t eaten much lately and she was famished. She groaned. She clutched her stomach. made an eating motion with her hands hoping that the creature would understand.

“Nakiso?” the creature asked. Lucy shrugged her shoulders.

“Nakiso?” the creature asked again, this time miming pouring something on the platter of food it held. Lucy shook her head no.

“Bod?” it asked in clarification. Lucy shook her head again.

“Bod” it concluded and poured a bottle of something orange on the

food. Lucy didn’t care if it was gross tasting or not. She just dug right in. She was overwhelmed by a taste that was sweet, sour, spicy and mild. It was GOOD. She put her thumbs up in approval. This time, it was the scientist’s turn to shrug. Lucy shook her head the way she took to mean yes in this weird place. The scientist did something that Lucy took to be a smile.

I think I should give you a little background information on this alien. Her name is Mary. Her dream job when she was little was to be an artist because she was good at drawing. Later on in life though, she wanted to be a scientist and that profession just stuck. Although she was a scientist, she still drew in her spare time. Her office had been converted into a studio. Artwork hung all over the wall and was all over the floor. Yes. She was good at drawing. It was one of her favorite pastimes. She may have been a good drawer, but one thing she had absolutely no experience with was looking after a baby alien. Somehow, it felt good caring of it.

Mary went into her office and got some papers and a pencil. After a quick sketch she handed a paper over to Lucy. A light of understanding shone on Lucy’s face as she looked at the drawing. The paper showed a diagram of two planets forced together. Underneath of the doodle were some illegible scribbles that might have been the alien’s handwriting. Just then, an idea popped into Lucy’s head. She flipped the paper over and scrawled furiously. Then, she handed the paper back to Mary. Mary looked at the scribbled picture. It had a picture of them writing mail. Mary shrugged as if to say to whom? Lucy took the paper again and drew a person with a crown on top of earth. Then, she drew the letter getting handed to it. Mary shook her head yes. Mary handed Lucy a piece of paper to write on.

.

When they were done, both papers said more or less this:

Dear government,

I have figured out a way to communicate with these aliens on this other planet! Do not write to them. I repeat DO NOT WRITE TO THEM! They don’t understand our language. Draw pictures to communicate with them. I have met an alien who has written the same letter to its government so that they will know how to communicate this way and they might use this idea.

Your advice supplier,

Lucy/Mary

When our planet’s government got the letter, it tried the tactic out at once. In no time, the other planet was ready with a reply. After a while, the two planets could communicate easily with each other.

The same went for Mary and Lucy. Now, that sweet, sour, spicy, mild stuff was Lucy’s favorite to put on any food. Now she lived in Mary’s house in the biggest “closet” she’d ever seen , which had been converted into Lucy’s large and spacious room. Now, Lucy could talk because Mary helped Lucy take her mind off of her parents. Lucy could even speak a little of Mary’s language while Lucy was also teaching Mary a little of her own language.

“Lo-see, Lo-see,” Mary said, “Lo-see. Yabba gabba. Big.”

“Mm?” Lucy mumbled, not really awake yet. When she opened her eyes, she saw a picture that was almost like a comic. It showed the sequence of an asteroid passing the two planets. Then, in the next frame, it showed a picture of the alien planet getting pulled away from earth. Lucy shrugged her shoulders and asked “Eebi?"

“Coom” Mary said making a motioning gesture with her hand. Lucy groggily got out of bed and followed Mary to a telescope. Mary pointed to it as if to say look into it. When Lucy looked into it she saw an asteroid. Mary held up a picture of a human on top of the earth waving goodbye to the other planet as it broke away.

Lucy gasped. The asteroid’s gravitational pull would pull Mary’s planet away from the earth! If she went back to earth, she would never see Mary again, and if she stayed with Mary, she would never see earth again. She had to find a way to stop this.

As if to read her mind, Mary put her thumbs down in a no. Lucy shrugged in a why not? Mary made a motion with her hands that said it’s impossible. Lucy was then faced with the hardest challenge in her life. To go, or not to go. That was the question. As the asteroid got closer, the ground around them began to shake. Stay or go, stay or go. She had a future here. Did she have a future on earth other than to duck and dodge away from the orphanage staff and hide in the woods? To go back to being mute? That was the one fear in her life that sent her scuttling to her room. Her room. She jumped onto her bed. Her bed. Yes, this was her decision. She didn’t care about anything right now. She was safe in her room in her bed. That nice thought sent her drifting off to sleep…

The two planets were ripped apart from each other. One planet caught in the asteroid’s gravity force, earth still caught in the solar system. As the two planets drifted away from each other their populations changed.

Plus one, minus one.