My Friend is an Alien (niklas and friends) Read online

  "Must've been because he landed there that he likes playing in it so much," remarked Jahv on occasion.

  "Or he landed on his head." countered Keith, but not very effectively. He found the mud a lot of fun to play in himself, if only because he knew that if his parents ever found out about it, he'd be in more trouble than he usually was at their hands, especially his stepfather's. His mother could be more understanding, but lately, she tended to go along with what Keith's stepfather said and did. That upset Keith more than ever. Granted, Keith lived with his grandmother most of the time, and she was okay, but she was so elderly that she wasn't someone that Keith could really have much fun with.

  Davy and Keith tended to spend their time with Jahv, either playing in the pond, or wondering what new trouble Jahv was going to cause with his computer. «Trouble» wasn't the most accurate word, but every time Jahv hacked into some new site, out of simple, childlike curiosity combined with an alien intellect far beyond anything mankind presently knew, Keith half-expected Jahv to try to land the Space Shuttle in a nearby field, reprogram the Mars Pathfinder to search for settlements, or for all he knew, program every television set in the world to play reruns of "The Partridge Family." And he suspected Jahv was capable of any or all of the above.

  Today, however, Jahv was not working with his computer. He was digging around in his backpack. That alone could take hours, thought Keith. All Jahv had ever explained was that the backpack, like the cloaked dome-tent in which he lived, contained an artificial tesseract — essentially a four-dimensional region of space confined within a three-dimensional object — like a backpack or a tent. That made the interior of the object exponentially larger than the exterior. Neither Keith nor Davy understood the scientific principles. But they couldn't deny it worked. Jahv's tent was the size of a decent house or a very large apartment. As for the backpack, Keith wouldn't've been surprised to see Jahv pull a small truck from it if there had been room to get it past the opening of the pack, which seemed to be its only size constraint.

  Apparently Jahv was really searching for something, because his entire head, upper torso, and arms were buried within the backpack, which made for an extremely odd sight that the other two boys were having a very difficult time not laughing themselves silly over. It didn't help that Jahv, according to his peoples' custom that children did not regularly wear clothes, was stark naked. So the sight on the floor was nothing short of a bright green butt and legs squirming around, their owner apparently having been half-eaten by a denim blue vinyl backpack.

  "Any thoughts as to what we do if he gets stuck?" asked Davy, who as usual was dressed in denim coveralls and no shirt. "Or falls in?"

  Keith shrugged. Hot as it had been this summer, he'd been wearing shorts and sandals. "Turn it over, dump it out, and hope that the entire contents don't overwhelm the place?"

  "I wonder if even HE knows what the entire contents are?" wondered Davy.

  "Doubt it." replied Keith. "You know the entire contents of YOUR room?"

  Davy grinned. "Nope. Although I did find a cheese sandwich I lost last week."

  "Where was it?" asked Keith.

  "Under the bed." answered Davy.

  "What made you look under there?" asked Keith.

  "Trying to figure out what had died." said Davy, not quite stifling a grin. "The sandwich had."

  "It's disgusting what you people eat, you know!" came a muffled yell from the backpack.

  Davy and Keith giggled. Jahv's alien metabolism could tolerate some foods from Earth, but not all. On the list of things Jahv and Keyro had to avoid were cheese, peanuts, peanut butter, and cola. Other sodas were chemically safe, but, as it had turned out, not safe from a reaction standpoint. Not long after his arrival, Keyro had chugged back an entire two-liter bottle of Sprite in one sitting. The resultant belch had blown leaves from the trees and set off a car alarm in a neighborhood almost a mile away.

  "One more like THAT and they're going to KNOW something weird is out here!" Keith had remarked at the time.

  "Yeah, but are they going to want anything to do with it?" Martin had replied. As it turned out, the noise had been heard, but had been reported in the local newspaper as a sonic boom, considered odd only because there were no military bases all that nearby.

  Finally, Jahv started to wriggle out of the backpack. "Found it!" he called. "How would you guys like to see what my world looks like?"

  "He's either found a globe, or an interstellar shuttle in there." said Keith.

  "I'm betting on the globe." said Davy. "He ran away and can't go home, remember?"

  "I'm hoping for the shuttle, just to see him haul something that big out of that backpack." remarked Keith.

  Jahv extracted himself, and was holding a triangular-shaped box, about a foot long on either side, and perhaps six inches high. At each corner of the triangle, which was silver but seemed to reflect many colors, were small antennae which Jahv was pulling out to greater length. Then he pressed the exact center of the triangle, and a small control panel appeared.

  "What is that thing?" asked Keith.

  "It's called a holocron." explained Jahv. "I can program it to project a holographic representation of my world, or almost any environment. We can walk around in it, and participate fully. The device can project solid-light creations, and will react to our presence. Sort of like a fully interactive movie or video game."

  "Sounds a lot like the holodeck from Star Trek." said Davy.

  "That's exactly what it's like!" answered Jahv.

  "Great. I never could figure out how that could possibly work, and now he's got a compact one in a little box." remarked Keith.

  "What would you like to see on my world?" asked Jahv.

  Davy pondered the question. "You have anyplace like the pond?"

  Jahv grinned. "As a matter of fact, there was a large lake not too far from where we lived, when we were home, which wasn't very often. I'd go fishing there. I had a small hoverboat."

  "Let's do that!" said Davy.

  "Works for me." added Keith.

  Jahv pressed a button on the console, and the world around the three boys turned into a miasma of shimmering light. Several seconds later, they were standing, so it seemed, on the surface of an alien world.

  The sky was a gentle lavendar, incredibly merging into a pale green towards the horizon. Tall grass waved in a light breeze. The grass was a greenish-blue in color. There was a scent in the air, like cinnamon. Just beyond the tall grass was a lake with an island in the middle of it. Tall trees that looked like someone had crossed a pine with a palm waved in the wind. The trees were a deep mottled green, the water a deep bluish-purple. In the distance, beyond a faint haze, were the futuristic spires of an alien city, incredibly complex in design.

  And in the sky above — two suns.

  Davy's eyes went wide. "WOW!" he said.

  Keith couldn't speak. He knew, in his mind, that this wasn't real. But it was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen.

  "Come on," said Jahv, obviously unfazed by it all. To him, this was home. "The hoverboat is over this way."

  Jahv led the other two boys to the edge of the lake, where a circular platform with a control panel on a short platform in the middle of it, and railing around it, waited. The boys all climbed in, and Jahv started the hoverboat, which glided silently out over the lake.

  "So — what are we fishing for?" asked Keith in a quieter-than-usual voice. He and Davy were still mesmerized by the scenery.

  Jahv opened a storage panel in the size of the platform, and brought out three devices that frankly looked like long, narrow flashlights. He considered the question. He knew he had to translate names into language that Davy and Keith could understand. This wasn't always easy. "I think the best description would be 'bulb-eyed red-fin'."

  Davy and Keith glanced at Jahv, who merely shrugged. "Best I can come up with, guys, unless you want the native version."

  "No thanks." said Keith. Jahv's language, which sounded like radio
static to anyone else, came close to hurting his ears.

  Jahv passed out the equipment. "What the heck is this?" asked Keith. "Lightsabers? We supposed to make sushi out of the fish before we even catch them?"

  Jahv grinned. "Watch." He pressed a red button on the device, drew it back over his shoulder, and then cast it out just like a fisherman on Earth would have done. A bright blue line of light shot forth, and then slowly settled into the water at a distance.

  "Wow!" said Davy. "But — what do we use for bait?"

  "You probably didn't see it," said Jahv, "but the fishing rod released a tiny sonic device at the far end. It attracts fish."

  "Hey, at least we don't have to worry about getting hooks caught in our hands — or worse." remarked Keith. "Or do we?"

  Jahv shook his head. "When a fish bites, the lure creates a molecular bond. Sometimes the fish get away, but not very often. They can be released if you press the blue button on the rod, and that way you don't lose the lure, either."

  "Well, let's give this a try!" said Davy. He'd fished several times, and enjoyed it. He made a successful cast in the direction opposite Jahv's. Keith then followed suit, with almost as good a cast as Davy's.

  A few minutes later, Davy felt a tug on his line. "I think I've got something! How do I reel it in?"

  "Press the green button." replied Jahv.

  Davy did so, and he felt the pull get stronger. But he could also see something flopping around in the water that was being brough in closer. Moments later, he had brought the fish into the boat.

  "Nicely done." said Jahv. He and Keith had shut down their rods. "That's a bulb-eyed red-fin, all right."

  "Gross!" proclaimed Keith, and in fact it was. The fish, about a foot long, had a slimy, scale-less, mottled, dark green body, that otherwise looked more or less fishlike. This didn't surprise Keith or Davy too much, since Jahv was more or less human in appearance. The fish had a large red fin on its back, and two bulbous, protruding eyes up front. It had a huge mouth, and a wrinkled face with several rather haphazard «whiskers» like a catfish emanating from it.

  "Jeez, what do you catch these things for?" asked Keith. "To put them out of the misery of having to look at each other?"

  "Believe it or not, they're excellent eating." replied Jahv.

  Keith made a face almost as ugly as that of the red-fin's. "I think I'll take your word for that."

  "Besides, it's just a hologram." added Davy. "We couldn't really eat it."

  Jahv shrugged. "Actually, I could program my food replicator to duplicate it. It wouldn't act alive, of course, but.

  "That's okay." said Keith hastily. He had no intention of eating something this ugly.

  Davy pushed the fish over the side of the hoverboat, where it swam off. All three boys cast their lines out again. Minutes later, it was Keith's turn to get a bite. But whatever it was was a lot stronger than Davy's catch. "Hey, Jahv, how big do those — uhnnnn — red-fin fish get?"

  "Davy's was pretty large." replied Jahv, seemingly concerned. "Why?"

  "Then I think I must have hooked a mutant or something, because I don't think I can hold onto this thing!" complained Keith.

  Jahv's eyes went wider than usual. "Uh, ohhh."

  "What do you mean, 'uh oh'?" protested Keith. "I don't want to hear 'uh, oh' right now!"

  "You might have hooked onto the Legend of the Lake." said Jahv. "I thought I'd taken care of that glitch!"

  "Glitch!?" exclaimed Davy and Keith simultaneously. Just then, a huge, serpentine head rose from the water. The head alone was easily as large as any of the boys. It was attached to a neck that was a good twenty feet long. This beast was nothing less than a medieval dragon, with scales, frilled ears, and a nasty attitude. Keith's fishing line was squarely in the creature's mouth. The dragon jerked its head, which sent Keith flying out of the hoverboat with such force that the boat itself overturned. Then the dragon sped off in the opposite direction.

  "Keith! For God's sake, let go of the fishing rod!" yelled Davy, once he and Jahv had swam out from under the capsized boat.

  Keith had been so petrified, being pulled across the lake by the alien equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster, that simply letting go hadn't occurred to him, but he finally did so, and the dragon swam off and submerged itself again. Frankly, Keith was more than a little angry. He swam back to his soaked friends. "What the hell was that thing doing in your program? I could've been eaten!"

  Jahv tried not to grin. "Somebody put it in there as a joke, years ago. It's not even native to this world. Supposedly some expedition saw it on a largely uninhabited jungle world. I've tried to delete it, but it keeps cropping up. You weren't in any real danger. As you've said, it's only a hologram. You can't be harmed in here."

  "Oh yeah?" protested Keith. "I just went bodysurfing at the tail end of a water dragon that was apparently the result of some alien hacker! My chest and my stomach feel like I've been bounced off of walls, and my arms feel like they've been dislocated!"

  Jahv considered this. "It's possible that because my people are physically stronger than yours, you would feel a greater strain. I am sorry, Keith."

  Keith nodded. He was calming down. He'd really just been given a nasty surprise. "Maybe there's somewhere else on your world we could visit?"

  Jahv scratched his left antenna. Davy had learned that this was what Jahv did when he was in deep thought. "We could visit MetroCore. It's the largest city on my world. And there's a wonderful — what's your word —? Oh, yes. There's a wonderful Mall there."

  "Sounds great, but aren't we going to be a little obvious?" asked Keith.

  "Yes, I remember you said when you first met us that you'd never seen people quite like us before." added Davy. "And if this program is fully interactive…"

  Jahv stared at his two friends. "Well, that's true. But both of you have fairly long hair. You could pretty well pass for Kintasians. As long as no one notices that your ears aren't pointed."

  "What about how we're dressed?" asked Keith.

  Jahv considered this, as well. "If anyone asks, which I doubt, since no one pays any more attention to children in MetroCore than they seem to in your society, just tell them you're recently freed servants. That'll explain the clothes and the hair."

  "I think we've just had our fashion insulted." remarked Davy.

  "What fashion?" countered Keith.

  Jahv said, "Holocron Access" to the seemingly open field, and the device that had created it appeared at their feet. He made several adjustments and reactivated it. Second later, the lake and field around them shimmered and vanished, and was replaced by a wide open plaza, with huge, alien buildings on every side, towering to immense heights into the lavendar sky. The architecture was almost as varied as the strange people that the boys saw on every side. Some were like Jahv, others were clearly from different planetary races. One being seemed to be an eight foot lizard. Another seemed to be a walking statue, a person made of rock.

  There was, of course, no shortage of Jahv's people, the Botarans in evidence. And as Jahv had explained when Keyro had arrived, and proven to be an entirely different color than Jahv, Botarans came in a great many different colors. The boys saw red Botarans, yellow Botarans, blue Botarans, even one with stripes and one with dots on his skin. The scary thing was how much they otherwise looked alike. They all dressed identically, in bland, grey, form-fitting outfits, they all had white hair, and every one of them was carrying what looked like a laptop computer, and probably was.

  "Come on!" called Jahv, already walking towards the largest building in the distance. "MetroMall is this way."

  "How is it there are so many different types of aliens on your world?" asked Davy.

  "My world is a center for a lot of interplanetary techno-commerce." replied Jahv.

  "I'm having a hard time seeing all this as a hologram." said Keith.

  "Don't try to." explained Jahv. "Some of it isn't. I didn't want to go into too much detail, but the holocron automatically links to som
e of my other equipment, including the replicator. If you pick up food around here anyplace, it will be an actual sample of food. And anything or anyone that you touch is made solid by another device I've got, that I don't use much. It's sort of like the replicator, but it's used for dry goods. Non-food items. It's called a fabricator. I really brought it along in case I'd forgotten anything."

  "In THAT backpack?" joked Davy.

  "But what makes the — people — move and seem so real?" asked Keith.

  "They're really just sort of mannequins, the ones we might come into actual contact with. But they're controlled by the holocron." explained Jahv as best as he could.

  "Sort of like those robots at Disneyland in some of the attractions." offered Davy. "Just more complicated and more interactive."

  Jahv nodded agreement, even though he didn't know what «Disneyland» was, but he understood «robots» and «interactive», and it was close enough.

  By now they'd reached the entrance to the vast MetroMall and had entered. Five levels of shops along an immense, wide corridor were laid before the three boys. The names of the stores were all in alien script, which Davy and Keith couldn't read.

  "So, what do you want to do first?" asked Jahv.

  "I can't speak for Keith, but I'm hungry. It feels like we've walked a long way." said Davy.

  "Go ahead and speak for me," said Keith. "I agree. But I guess now we'll find out if your food is safe for us!"

  Jahv grinned. "Don't worry. I wouldn't let you eat anything dangerous. I know a good place in here, too."

  The three boys scampered through the busy corridors of the Mall, but Davy and Keith were so busy looking around at the incredible sights that they weren't watching where they were looking, and Keith ran headfirst into a rather large and ugly-looking specimen of alien life.

  It was humanoid, but had short-cropped fur all over its body, and was wearing some sort of armor-plating. If somebody had crossed a Wookiee with a Klingon, this would have been the result. It snarled something that sounded extremely threatening.

  Keith was tired of getting hassled by grown-ups. Even ugly holographic alien ones. Before Davy or Jahv could react, Keith barked out a string of apparent gibberish and put up his fists. Incredibly, the huge alien's eyes went wide, he attempted to grin, backed off three steps, and then took off in a flying run. Keith wasn't sure whether to laugh or faint. He'd been reasonably sure he couldn't get too hurt in this holocron-created environment, but he certainly hadn't expected THAT!