“Wait a second. What are you saying?”
Dana smiled warmly. “The day I died, my soul found its next home—an Earth child, just about to be born. One destined to ultimately reconnect with my soul mate.”
“Melody is you?”
“No. I’m Melody. Hey, you didn’t think I’d leave you out here all by yourself, did you? What kind of soul mate does something like that?”
Chapter 19
AT LEAST I had one thing to feel good about.
The whole Dana-Mel-me weirdness wasn’t so weird anymore.
Too bad Dana couldn’t help me figure out an equally easy exit from my other jam: taking down Number 1 before he took me down. Mentally, I was kicking myself for not being better prepared to fulfill my primary mission on Earth as The Alien Hunter: destroying Number 1 for what he did to my family. For what he did to Mel’s mom.
That was something else Mel and I had in common: she also lost her mother to The Prayer when the gangly beast went on his rampage back in Kansas.
So I had to stop Number 1, no matter what seemingly invincible powers he possessed. I had to stop him before he wiped out every mother, father, and child on the planet—starting, of course, with me.
“You’re at the top of his list?” said Willy as we made our way out of Central Park.
Joe had used the GPS unit in his high-tech wristwatch (trust me, it does a ton more than tell time) to track down a nearby branch of famous original Ray’s Pizza on Columbus Avenue that was open till three AM. The vegan protein power bars had only kept his stomach happy for maybe fifteen minutes. He was starving again.
“Don’t worry, Daniel,” Willy, my wingman, continued. “At least we won’t have to waste time tracking down Number 1. He’ll come gunning for you.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” I said as we came out of the park near West Eighty-First Street. “But I need a plan for when he shows up. I also need my full powers. How can I go up against Number 1, who can manipulate the space-time continuum and chuck lightning bolts at me, if I can’t even whip up a few simple pizzas?”
“Your powers always kick in when you need them most,” said Willy. “It’s like your raw emotions mixed with the free-flowing adrenaline of a crisis become the rocket fuel that turbocharges your creativity.”
“Besides,” said Emma, “we’re still here.”
“That’s right,” said Joe. “You didn’t turn us into steaming piles of puke like you did with those pizzas.”
“He didn’t?” joked Dana, sniffing the air near Joe’s neck. “Oh. Right. That’s just your natural body odor.”
I shook my head and smiled. My friends were fun to hang with. They were also right.
My full powers would come back to me. Soon.
At least I sure hoped they would.
“Maybe we should take the fight to Number 1,” suggested Dana. (I figured I should call her ‘Dana’ when she was imaginary; ‘Mel’ when she was living, breathing, and horseback riding.)
“Or,” said Joe, his genius for strategy and tactics kicking in, “we let him think he’s bringing the fight to us when he’s just being lured into a giant bug zapper with Daniel as bait. Hey, speaking of bait, do you guys remember that sushi we had back in Tokyo?”
“I thought you wanted pizza,” said Dana.
“Sushi would be…”
Joe did not finish that sentence.
In fact, nobody said anything for about ten seconds. We all stood frozen on the sidewalk, gawking at a huge, glowing sphere suspended in midair and surrounded by eight orbiting planets. Earth’s entire solar system was only one hundred feet away, captured inside a glass box seven stories tall!
Chapter 20
“WHAT IS THIS PLACE?” asked Willy.
Joe’s talking smart-watch gave us the answer. “Welcome to the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space and the Hayden Planetarium.”
“This is where New York City keeps its stars,” I remarked.
“I thought that was Broadway,” said Joe.
“Not those kinds of stars,” I said with a laugh. “Our kind. Constellations. Galaxies. Spiral nebulas.”
“Daniel’s right,” added Emma. “There’s too much light pollution in this city from all the skyscrapers and cars and flashing signs for New Yorkers to see the real stars. The sky never gets dark enough. So they come here to see the heavens splashed across the curved ceiling of that giant sphere.”
“The Hayden Planetarium is the most technologically advanced space theater in the world,” added the smooth-talking Tour Guide App in Joe’s wristPod. “It presents hyper-realistic views of the night sky, as seen from Earth, using the world’s most advanced star projector: the Zeiss Mark IX, custom made for the museum.”
“Um, Joe?” said Dana.
“Yeah?”
“Can you turn that thing off?”
“Why?”
“Because I have an idea that I don’t want it to hear.”
Joe tapped a switch on his wrist gizmo. “Good-bye, Joe,” it said as it faded into sleep mode. “I hope you find your pizza.”
“Don’t worry,” said Joe. “I’m a man on a mission.”
“What’s up, Dana?” asked Willy.
“This is where they filmed that movie—Night at the Museum.”
“With the dinosaurs coming to life and junk?”
“Yep.” Dana turned to me with a sly twinkle in her eye. “So, Daniel—what’s one of the best ways to get your creative juices flowing? To make sure all your powers are fully restored?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. I guess I could take a nap.”
“Or you could do something way better. You could go inside the museum and play with all the toys. The dinosaurs and woolly mammoths. The Easter Island head statues, the big blue whale…”
“Um,” said Emma, “you want Daniel to, basically, goof off when he’s just been promoted to Number 1’s number one enemy?”
“Exactly. A little creative playtime may be exactly what you need, Daniel. You’re too tightly focused. You need to loosen up, kick back, and let your imagination run wild. Face it—you need to have a little fun.”
I realized Dana was right.
Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to walk away from it for a little while and throw yourself into some completely different creative endeavor.
Like having a blast inside the American Museum of Natural History when no one else is around, except a few security guards, who I could easily mind-bend into taking a quick catnap.
It was definitely time for another “night at the museum”—Daniel X style!
Chapter 21
“I THOUGHT WE came in here to have fun!” screamed Emma.
We were being chased around the Fossil Halls on the museum’s fourth floor by the petrified skeleton of a one-hundred-and-forty-million-year-old stegosaurus. The dinosaur had a row of guitar-pick-shaped plates running down its spine and jumbo-sized spikes on the tip of its tail.
“This is fun!” I had to shout to be heard over the roar of the giant dinosaur and the squeal of the baby stegosaurus that I had also imagined back to life.
“Watch out!” called Willy. “Triceratops on your right!”
This sixty-five-million-year-old dinosaur had three horns sticking out of its skull shield. All three were aimed at us.
“Third floor!” shouted Dana.
“Let’s take the elevator,” added Emma.
We dashed down a wide corridor just as a half-dozen fur-wrapped Neanderthals came running up it, carrying spears and crude stone tools. They were waxy refugees from a prehistoric-man diorama. Grunting at us to get out of their way, they went chasing after the dinosaurs that were thrashing around in the Fossil Hall.
“Maybe they’ll make brontosaurus burgers,” quipped Joe. “Like the Flintstones!”
We jumped into a waiting elevator and rode down to the third floor, where a cluster of chattering chimps, growling gorillas, laughing hyenas, howling lions, scree
ching hawks, and a big honking Gila monster greeted us the instant the doors flew open. Moments ago, they’d all been stuffed taxidermy specimens frozen inside their display cases lining the Halls of Primates, African Mammals, North American Birds, and Reptiles. Now it looked like they were ready to have a wild time on the other side of the glass. A couple of primates started tossing plastic bananas and monkey poop at each other.
“Um, how about we try the second floor?” suggested Emma.
I flicked my wrist and the elevator doors instantly closed.
“Anybody know what’s down on two?” asked Willy as the elevator descended.
“Our Alpar Nokian friends,” I said, because my internal Wi-Fi system was once again up and running, and I had been able to access the museum’s website.
We actually heard our otherworldly friends before we saw them.
A blare of elephant trumpets greeted us the moment the elevator doors started to open.
And there they were, from the Hall of Asian Mammals and the Hall of African Mammals: two herds of large, double-tusked pachyderms Or, as we call them up on Alpar Nok, our gift to the people of Terra Firma. That’s right. Elephants—Asian, African, even the extinct mastodons—are aliens. Our Alpar Nokian ancestors brought them to Earth just to wow you guys about three million years ago.
After spending some quality time with the herd and taking an elephant ride through the museum’s sweltering-hot live butterfly exhibit, we headed into what felt like home: The Rose Center for Earth and Space.
Joe cut donuts with a moon buggy he raced around and around the seven thousand square feet of the Hall of the Universe, directly underneath the giant Space Theater. The rest of us played dodgeball with the Willamette Meteorite, because I was able to levitate the 15.5-ton chunk of metal that had crashed into Oregon a long, long time ago from a galaxy far away.
Dana was right: playing was good for me. I felt as if all my powers had been restored, my batteries fully charged.
“Thanks,” I said when the two of us had a moment alone in front of a 3-D image of colliding galaxies.
“Hey, that’s what soul mates are for. Come on. Let’s head upstairs. I’m feeling homesick.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
We all hurried up into the Space Theater where I activated the Zeiss star projector and sent us on a scientifically accurate virtual journey out of the Milky Way, across a couple of distant galaxies—all the way to Alpar Nok.
“It’s beautiful,” sighed Emma as our home planet drifted into view on the ceiling, surrounded by its familiar sea of stars—the same constellations we used to see when we were kids staring up into the peaceful night sky.
“It’s awesome,” said Willy.
“Totally,” said Dana.
“Actually,” groused Joe, “it could be even more awesome.”
“What? How?”
“Well, there could be pizza.”
And so I whipped up a killer pizza-fest. Ten different kinds. Everything from pepperoni to Hawaiian to veggie to cheese slices topped with french fries. Every pie was perfect. Everybody got exactly what they wanted.
“Okay,” said Joe. “Now the stars and all that junk are spectacular. Stellar, even!”
We all laughed.
When the pizza was finished and we were all just quietly stargazing, I thanked Dana again.
And then, exhausted from the most fun I’d had in an extremely long time, I drifted off to sleep the best way possible—tucked in underneath a blanket of stars.
Chapter 22
MY MOST PEACEFUL sleep since getting run over by a Mack truck ended abruptly with somebody yanking at my leg.
“Hey, kid. Wake up. What are you doing in here? The museum doesn’t open for four hours.”
It was a security guard. One of the guys I had put into snooze mode so my friends and I could enjoy our night in the museum without any adult supervision or interference. I looked around the planetarium. The seats were all empty. The gang was gone.
“What the heck do you think you’re doing in here, anyway?” demanded the guard.
“Well, sir,” I said very contritely, “I was with my school group and I guess I must’ve fallen asleep during the star show. I hope I didn’t miss my bus.”
“Your bus? It’s six o’clock in the morning. There aren’t any freaking school buses outside.”
“Really? Gosh. How will I get back to school?”
“Wait a second. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been asleep in here since yesterday afternoon? How come I didn’t see you when I made my rounds last night?”
I could tell the guard wasn’t buying my cover story. He was also getting his grump on, big time. Probably because he didn’t sleep very well last night. I guess I should’ve made sure he was sitting in a chair or lying down in a comfy mummy’s sarcophagus before I put him under. It’s never very comfortable to sleep standing up. Unless, of course, you’re a horse.
“There’s something hinky going on here,” said the grouchy security guard as he reached for the radio clipped to his belt. I figured he was about to summon backup or a truant officer or maybe even the NYPD.
So, powers feeling fully functional, I employed a little Alpar Nokian mind trick and altered the guard’s mental perception of “what the heck” was going on. It’s sort of an instant hypnosis type of thing I do. And, yes, it can be a blast at parties.
“Oh, I see,” said the guard, clipping his walkie-talkie back to his belt. “You got separated from your school group. But now you’re going to walk out of the museum and take the subway home. That sounds like a very good plan, young man.”
“Thank you, sir. Have a nice day.”
“You too,” said the guard, a placid smile on his face.
Actually, I just hoped my day didn’t include getting stabbed in the back by a lightning bolt.
I decided I’d better check in with Mel’s father, FBI Special Agent Martin Judge, down in Washington, D.C. I needed to fill him in on the new developments regarding Number 1, the leader of all the alien outlaws on Terra Firma. Special Agent Judge headed up the government’s Interplanetary Outlaw Unit, or IOU, which even he considered a lame name but couldn’t change it. “It’s already etched in the glass on my office door,” he’d told me.
Agent Judge had also been one of my father’s few earthling friends. They’d worked together, years ago, hunting down the aliens infesting Earth. Judge had lost his wife, Mel’s mom, to The Prayer. For me, that meant the man had definitely earned the right to be included in my final alien hunt.
When I exited the museum, I ducked into a nearby dog run. The place was empty and secluded behind a hedgerow. I figured it would be the best place for me to teleport down to D.C. without attracting too much unwanted attention.
Usually, when I teleport it’s instantaneous. There’s no woo-woo music like on Star Trek. No glittering ghost image of my body as I fade out of view. I just focus on where I want to be and—BOOM!—I’m there.
Only not today.
Apparently, not all my powers were up and running.
Either that, or the omnipotent Number 1 was over-riding my mental circuitry, bending my mind as if it were a warm Twizzler—doing to me what I had done to the security guard.
Whatever the reason, I wasn’t able to mentally project myself down to the nation’s capital. So, once again, I tapped into my internal Wi-Fi to explore alternate means of transportation.
Flying commercial was out. Airplanes have to travel through the sky where godlike aliens typically hang out. I’d be an easy target trapped inside a metal tube hurtling along at thirty thousand feet.
I’d have to take the train. Amtrak.
But first I’d take the subway from West Eighty-First Street down to New York’s Penn Station.
Because the subway was underground where there’d be a much lower risk of lightning strikes.
Chapter 23
DISGUISED AS A nerdy-looking college student (all I needed was a pair of glasses, a ratty
knit hat, and some ironic facial hair), I hopped aboard Amtrak’s fastest train: the Acela Express from New York to Washington.
Just before the train was scheduled to depart, a very cute girl about my age (and also wearing glasses) worked her way up the aisle, which was crowded with passengers stowing luggage in the overhead racks. She had a small backpack slung over one shoulder and stopped when she reached my row.
“Excuse me,” she said with the most mellifluous voice I have ever heard, “but is that window seat taken?”
I quickly glanced around the train car. There were still plenty of empty seats—including whole rows that were completely vacant.
“No,” I said with a smile, moving in so she could take the aisle seat.
As she sat down, I realized there was something special about this girl. An aura. She seemed to glow with calm confidence.
“I hope you don’t mind sitting with me,” she said, smoothing out her skirt.
“Not at all.”
“I just thought you’d be a much more interesting travel companion than all these…” She lowered her voice to make sure no one could hear what she said next. “Business people.”
That made me laugh. “I hope so. I’m Daniel.”
“Mikaela,” she said, extending her hand for me to shake.
The instant I gripped it, I felt a warm tingle flowing through my body. It shot all the way down to my toes. Yeah. Mikaela was definitely something special.
“So, Daniel,” Mikaela said with a knowing grin, “where are you traveling?”
“Union Station, D.C. How about you?”
“The same.”
“Do you live there?”
“Not really.” It was kind of an odd answer, but she quickly reached into her backpack and pulled out a tattered and stained paperback. “Hey, have you ever read this? I found it at a flea market last weekend. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. It’s from all the way back in 1961.”
“And it’s still one of my favorites,” I said, because it was. Stranger in a Strange Land tells the story of Valentine Smith, a human born on the planet Mars who comes to Earth after being raised by Martians. Smith has to figure out how to live with earthlings on what he considers a very odd planet; he is the stranger in a strange land. It’s probably the most famous science fiction novel ever written. It’s also, basically, my life story.