Mike Stellar Read online

  To Steven, Sam, Georgia, and Isaac—

  my favorite space cadets

  Mike Stellar

  Mrs. Halebopp, English

  May 31, 2174

  The Process Of Terraforming, Made Simple

  So here’s what they do: The Project sends exploration crews out to search for ice. And when I say out to search for it, I don’t just mean out to the Plug ’n’ Sip to find a bag of ice. It’d have to be a honkin’ big bag of ice, because it would have to cover part of a PLANET.

  That’s what the crazy Project dudes want. Ice on a planet. So they can melt it. So how do they melt it? With gigantic mirrors! In space! That look kind of like sails on old-fashioned ships! The mirror-sails can range anywhere from five miles across to two hundred miles across, can you believe that?!

  Once the space crews are finished building the mirror-sails (sometimes this takes years and years), they glide the gigantic mirror-sails over the ice on the planet and then turn the sails toward the sun. Why do they do that, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. The sails reflect the sun’s heat down onto the ice and melt it. My dad showed me how this works by taking a magnifying glass outside and using it to melt an ice cube. It’s more fun to fry ants this way, so I wonder if maybe the mirror-sails could be used to fry aliens. Anyway, the ice starts to melt and that releases carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide is the stuff humans spew out when they breathe. This helps to heat the planet up somehow . Once the planet heats up and the water melts, it’s easy to start growing plants and grasses and things like that. That’s when the fast-growing plants and frankenbugs and bacteria and stuff are dropped onto the plnet . Then, a few years later—voilà—Earth II (or III or IV). The whole process is called terraforming. Some people are really against it, like my sister, Nita. But other people think it’s just great. I don’t really care one way or another.

  All in all, a much better report than last time, Mike. You have to stop with the editorial comments, though, and you MUST START USING PROPER PARAGRAPHS. Research reports are serious work. You are presenting facts. Please keep that in mind when you rewrite this paper. (And don’t be discouraged, Mike. This will make a decent ten-minute speech due NEXT MONTH.)

  C+

  “Rewrite? Ten-minute speech? Arrgh. I knew Mrs. Halebopp was out to get me.” I marched over to a tree, thought about kicking it, and stomped on the ground instead.

  “Her giant head blocks out the sun and her black-hole eyes read my mind. I know they do.” I shook my report at my friend Stinky for emphasis. “It already took me like eight million years to research this paper, now I have to do it again? And read it in front of people? I am toast.”

  Stinky stared with his mouth kind of open. I’m not usually a stomping and yelling kind of kid.

  “Worse than toast,” I continued, my voice cracking, making me madder. “I’m oily, melted margarine dripping off of toast and onto the floor. I’ll be smeared into the carpet at school. Forever. No escape.”

  I crumpled up the cellopage printout of my report and threw it into an ant bed I’d been nudging with my foot. The ants streamed over it, seething, taking out their frustration on my 100 percent recyclable, 100 percent doomed report.

  “Mike?” Stinky gawked as if my head had exploded. “You need to seriously cut back on the drama.”

  Stinky was always saying that. I could be on fire, with robots eating my legs, and he’d be all, “Calm down, man. Things’ll be fiiiine.” It was funny, because just looking at him, you’d think Stinky would be the opposite. His hair stood up like his mom must’ve accidentally electrocuted him when he was a baby. His arms were splotchy with freckles; his laugh sounded like a machine gun. He seemed like the human embodiment of the word “staccato.” And yet he was as calm as the wake of a Dirigible Cruiser.

  He was silly and fun and, well, not actually very stinky. But he’d been my friend since we were both in diapers, and I didn’t care that people still jokingly held their noses whenever he walked by. (You accidentally drop air-freshener tablets into the boys’ room toilets instead of the stink bombs you promised, and apparently, you never live down everyone’s disappointment.)

  Stinky was my best friend and I listened to him … most of the time. So I sat down on the ground (away from the ants) and put my face in my hands.

  “You need to just relax. Mrs. Halebopp, she’s not the devil. I mean, she did give you a C+. That’s a hundred times better than your astrophysics report.”

  I winced. I still didn’t know anything about astrophysics.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Stinky punched me on the shoulder. My mouth curled into a tiny O. If only he punched as carefully as he chose his stink bombs.

  “Your paper isn’t that bad, Mike. I know you feel this pressure or whatever ’cause your mom and dad are big shots over at the Project, but I don’t think Mrs. Halebopp cares about that. She might not even know about it.”

  “Ha!” I said, rubbing my face and my hair. I smelled my hands. Shampoo, head grease, humiliation … yep … that was me, all right.

  “Everyone knows who my parents are, dude. Especially after … you know …”

  “Well, think of it this way … after that disaster, she probably thinks you’re not very smart at all, and she’s cutting you some slack. Heck. I want some slack cut for me. Just ’cause your parents kil—”

  I jumped up.

  “Are you trying to make me feel better, Stink? ’Cause it’s not working.” I couldn’t believe he’d almost said what he’d almost said. Stinky of all people. He never said anything about my parents, not even when Hubble was lost. I was really mad now. All my day’s frustrations were burning right between my eyes. It made me squint and frown and bite the inside of my cheek. I rubbed my palms on the front of my new solar pants—pants that Stinky, who I thought was my friend, helped me pick out at the mall last week.

  “What are you trying to say, Yeager?” I growled, using his real name, which I knew he loathed. I marched over to where he stood. “Are you saying my parents are stupid, just like me? They killed a bunch of innocent people ’cause they’re so dumb?”

  Stinky looked surprised and put his hands in the air like I was holding a particle gun on him.

  “No, Mike. I … I was trying to make you feel better!”

  “Better? Accusing my parents of …” I trailed off. The area around us suddenly darkened and I caught a whiff of burnt coffee beans.

  Mrs. Halebopp.

  Her beehive hairdo towered over us, leaning forward off of her Jupiter-sized head.

  “Is there trouble here, boys?” she asked through pursed lips, sunlight struggling to seep through her big blue hair. “Do I need to involve Mr. Burton?”

  “Uh …,” I said.

  “Uh …”,’ Stinky repeated. Our last involvement with the principal had left us both with three days of detention.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said grouchily, leaning in closer to me so that I could nearly taste the burnt coffee smell reeking from her polka-dot shirt. “Don’t let me catch you misbehaving, Mr. Stellar.” She thrust a fat old-fashioned book into my hand. It weighed about a frillion pounds. I stumbled forward a bit, dangerously close to actually … touching … Mrs. Halebopp. “You don’t have time to waste now that your speech is due next week instead of next month.” She stepped back with what seemed to be a gleeful look on her face. Or maybe she was just grimacing in the sunlight.

  “But,” I said, “I …”

  “And let’s hope you deliver your speech with more eloquence than your current rhetoric.” She pointed an extra-long, creaky-looking finger at me. “Use that book to research your paper. Kids these days need to learn that there’s nothing wrong with doing things the old-fashioned way.” After a moment she turned on her heel and wal
ked briskly back to the classroom.

  I stuffed the thousand-pound book into my bag. It was eerily quiet as Stinky and I continued to stare daggers at each other. Usually you could at least hear the flag clanging against the flagpole. I looked ahead. The new flag was “waving” in the distance. It was a hologram installed by the PTA (a “weatherproof flag that shines day and night”) and it gave me the creeps. I couldn’t believe I was thinking it, but maybe Mrs. Halebopp was right. Sometimes old-fashioned things are better.

  I gave Stinky one last dirty look and stomped down the sidewalk toward home. I could hear him yelling, “Mike! Are we still airboarding at Jones Park this weekend? Mi-ike!” after me, but I didn’t turn around.

  As I walked home grumbling, I did have one slightly happy thought. It was Thursday. That meant MonsterMetalMachines. My favorite show: Fierce Mangle and Preditator duking it out in three dimensions all over the living room. I had to pick up the pace and make it home soon. Otherwise my sister, Nita, would snag the remote and force me into watching some cruddy Earthlings for Earth propaganda. That would be just my luck—stuck with Neeters and her crazy-boring brainwashing shows all night.

  I looked at the sky, wishing this day would hurry up, when I heard a buzzy, mechanical whir behind me.

  I recognized the sound immediately. Mom’s electri-car. The window slid down and Mom said, “Hey there, Mr. Man.” (She always calls me Mr. Man. All I can say is: So. Dorky.)

  “Um, hi.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Nice greeting.” She let the electri-car roll to a stop. “You want to hop in and explain why you’re running so late?”

  “Okay.”

  Mom smiled her big ol’ mysterious smiley smile and said, “Window.” The window buzzed up. Then the passenger door slid open and I hopped into the electri-car. I tossed my bag into the backseat and said, “Belt.” The seat belt slid out from the sides of the seat, crushing the waistband on my solar pants and probably ruining their charging ability forever. I tugged at it a little. Mom’s e.c. always had extra-tight seat belts.

  “Why so late?” she asked again.

  I scratched an ant bite on my toe. “It’s a long story.”

  “How about a five-minute version?” Mom was trying not to sound mad, but her voice had that … tone.

  I pulled my Star City Quarks baseball cap down over my face. “I had a detention,” I said from under my cap, flinching with the anticipation of Mom’s reaction.

  Mom gasped. “Michael! Another one? What is the deal, kid? Why are you getting in so much trouble these days?”

  As if she didn’t know.

  I shrugged and hid under the dark red interior of my cap.

  “So?” Mom asked, reaching over and flicking my cap off my face.

  I stared out the window. Only a few hours earlier, Stinky and I were in detention together and still best friends. Now I could just wring his—

  “Michael!”

  “What?”

  “What happened?”

  “I, uh …” I totally spaced out on what we were talking about. I was staring at my reflection in the window.

  Dark brown wavy hair like Mom’s, only shorter. Brown eyes with flecks of purple, like Dad’s. A long nose. (Dad calls it a Roman nose. Stinky calls it a schnoz.) A pointy chin like Gram’s. Five or six freckles that could almost be connected to form Orion’s Belt on my left cheek. I looked like a normal kid. But inside I felt like a volcano. Fiery one minute, quiet the next, and then back to fiery again. I sighed, expecting steam to come shooting out of my nose.

  Squaring my jaw, I grimaced at myself in the window, working on an angry yet forgiving expression to give Stinky when he got on his knees and apologized—

  “To get a detention, Michael. Come on. This is the five-minute version, not five hours.” Mom engaged the e.c.’s autodrive and turned in her seat to stare at me. Her eyebrows squinched in a menacing V shape.

  “Right,” I said, reaching for my hat to hide behind again. “I, uh, creamed Marcy Fartsy with a dodgeball. In gym class. During a time-out.”

  “Michael Newton Stellar!”

  I could see it coming a mile away—the excuse to holler at me. I beat her to the punch and hollered, “She started it! She said you and Dad …” I tugged on my cap. “She started it.” Now my eyebrows became menacing.

  “So that’s why you were late? There wasn’t anything else? Say, an after-detention meeting with Mrs. Halebopp about your terraforming report?”

  “Huh? How did—?”

  “Mrs. Halebopp called me. She said you’re not serious about your schoolwork anymore.”

  “I’m serious about my schoolwork!” I yelled, knowing full well I wasn’t serious about it at all.

  The electri-car bumped over the recognition pod in the drivedropper of our small moon-stucco house. (Supposedly moon-stucco has actual moondust in it from the mining trips years ago. Dad says that’s all bunk. They just add some sparkly silica to regular ol’ stucco. I kind of like the idea of having pieces of the moon on my house, though, so I ignore Dad.)

  “Right,” said Mom. I could tell she was trying to regulate her irritation. “We’ve talked about what to do when the other kids tease you, Mike, and we’ve talked about your study habits. Am I going to have to take away your flight sims?”

  “Aw, Mom. Sim games have nothing to do with how boring school is. Plus, I’m really good at the sims. What if I want to be a pilot one day?”

  “You don’t get to be a pilot if you spend all your time playing video games and hacking into your sister’s com-bracelets. You have to apply yourself, Mike. Study. Use those smarts of yours for good, not evil.”

  I let a small smile escape. Mom knows that Fierce Mangle is my favorite MonsterMetalMachine, and it’s funny when she tries to imitate his robotic tone. “Use. Those. Smarts. For. Gud. Not. Eee. Vile.”

  “Just get out of the e.c. We’ll talk about it later,” Mom said.

  I said, “Belt,” and my seat belt snapped undone. I grabbed my bag, said, “Door,” and hopped out of the electri-car.

  Mom gathered her work stuff and we headed up the front walk while she clicked the button on her key chain. The drivedropper gobbled up the electri-car and stored it under the house.

  I stomped up the walk ahead of Mom, imagining the impending talk she and I—and Dad—were going to have. As the words “grounded,” and “big trouble,” and “no sims for a month” ran through my head rather loudly, I flung open the door and crashed headfirst into Nita.

  “Ahh! You freak, get off!” Nita yelled, staggering backward under the weight of my flailing body.

  “Get your fat head out of my way and I won’t have to stomp on it,” I said, still off balance.

  “Oh, children,” said Mom, sidestepping our melee. “Why can’t my babies just get along?”

  Nita made a noise like she was trying to cough up a hair ball and she walked toward the stairs. I tossed my bag on the hallway table and headed toward the viserator room.

  Mom kicked off her shoes and rubbed her face. “Nita? Honey? Is Daddy home?”

  From the foot of the stairs, Nita said, “He’s in the study reading all the latest news about your evil project.” She turned off the light over the staircase, muttered something about saving energy, and marched her big butt up to her room. She passed Dad as he came down.

  Dad was wearing his readers and the walls reflected them as he came down the stairs. They shone on the wall in a distorted font. Historical! Brave!

  Mom went up and kissed him on the neck.

  “Howdy, little lady.”

  “Ugh,” I moaned. “There’s a kid in the room, you guys.” I grabbed the remote and flipped on the viserator. It shot whorls of three-dimensional static through the room.

  “Man,” I grumbled. “Someone really needs to fix this thing. It’s been shooting static like this for ages.” Mom and Dad briefly looked over at me and stared at the static.

  “Hey, what’s this?” Dad asked suddenly. I twisted around on the sof
a. The fat book from Mrs. H had slid out of my bag onto the table. The fingerbulbs of his readers clattered as he clumsily picked it up and tried to flip through it. “This book is fantastic. Look at the binding.” He held the book up like it was a newborn baby. “Where did you get this old girl?”

  I made a face. “From another old girl. Mrs. Halebopp gave it to me to help research a report I’m writing.”

  “Well, wasn’t that nice?” Dad said absently. “Mind if I take a look? I’ll get it back to you soon.”

  I shrugged and turned around to watch the vis. Dad’s new love affair with old-fashioned books was nerdy. At least he still used his readers for news. It seemed like lately he was always in his study, staring into his palms as the fingerbulbs flashed the day’s headlines over and over.

  The static whorls finally disappeared and a three-dimensional commercial appeared.

  A guy was standing in a yard with weeds up to his knees, and his hands on his head. An announcer’s voice boomed, “—latest technology! Just grasp the grasshrinker and throw directly on your yard. In minutes the grass will shrink to a well-manicured size!”

  Stupid grasshrinkers, I thought. I was supposed to shrink the lawn last weekend but I forgot. I quickly flipped the channel, hoping Dad wouldn’t hear and lecture me. I flipped and flipped, trying to find MonsterMetalMachines, and it suddenly hit me that my show wasn’t going to be on. Every channel was full of news about Liftoff Day tomorrow. I had totally forgotten about it. Blah.

  Dad sat next to me.

  “Exciting stuff!” he said with a big smile. He looked happier than I had seen him in a long time.

  “Yeah,” I said. Mom sat down on my other side.

  “Michael,” she said, glancing at Dad, “there’s something your father and I would like to talk to you about.”

  Dad took the remote and turned off the viserator.

  Yuh-oh.

  Turning the viserator off always meant trouble. And whenever Mom said “your father and I,” that really meant something not good was about to happen. I knew that car ride home had gone too easy.

  “Would you please run upstairs and get Nita?” she asked.