“But you said we solved the problem!” cried Junior.
“He meant we figured out how it happened,” explained Mrs. Hyken. “We haven’t fixed the signal yet. We still need to figure out how.”
“Oh,” sadly moaned Junior.
“Do you want to take a look at some other worlds while they fix the problem?” asked Senior. Junior jumped up and down smiling. Senior took that as a yes. “But we’ll need one of you to move the camera around so we’ll be there if we decide to go home.”
“How about you do rock, paper, scissors?” said Junior.
“What’s rock, paper, scissors?” asked Mr. DaLoiff.
“It’s a game. All you need is your hand. A fist means rock, a flat hand palm down means paper, and two fingers mean scissors. Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock.”
“Got it,” said Mrs. Hyken.
Mr. DaLoiff stuck out a fist, and then Mrs. Hyken stuck out two fingers. She waited because she didn’t want to have to do it, so she made him lose on purpose. Mr. DaLoiff groaned.
“No, no, no, you have to do it together,” corrected Junior. He demonstrated with Senior. After he showed them, they did it right. Mr. DaLoiff won, so Mrs. Hyken had to control the camera.
Junior’s first exploration choice was a dingy brown planet called Lingslie.
“Promise you’ll follow us around with the camera?” asked Senior.
“Promise,” said Mrs. Hyken flatly.
Junior and Senior stood on the cylinders, and jumped into the screen. The sensation going to another world was not very pleasant. Not only did their senses stop working again, but they narrowly avoided colliding with several random objects. This took a lot less time than it did for them to travel between Earth and Sprigg. In about a minute, they were standing on a very rickety board. The board appeared to be on an ocean. Everything was brown. It felt very depressing, and Junior’s eyes even started watering.
“C’mon, let’s go,” said Senior, and he dragged Junior off the board. The sky was dark brown, the grass seemed to be dead, and there was not even a glance of a non-brown color (besides their clothes). The first place they went to was a two-story building. There were a lot of people chatting everywhere. Despite the overwhelming and depressing brown, no one seemed depressed. One person eventually saw Junior and Senior, walked over to them, inspected their clothes, and eventually spoke. His voice was not like a normal person’s voice, but it was more creaky and rusty. Junior later described his voice as “creepy.”
“What’s with your mono-colored clothes?” was the first thing he said.
“What do you mean, mono-colored?”
“They’re all brown!”
Junior and Senior looked at their clothes. They were not brown. They were black, white, orange, blue, yellow, and all sorts of colors.
“No, they’re not. Your world is all brown, unlike our clothes!”
“Oh, this exciting place?”
Junior and Senior were baffled.
“That’s not brown. That’s blue and pink and yellow and white and green and orange and red and even gray, but almost no brown.”
“Uh, you have it backwards. OUR SHIRTS are NOT BROWN, but YOUR WORLD is BROWN!” shouted Junior, as if the man could not tell the difference.
“Junior!” scolded Senior.
“What did he do?” asked the man.
“He screamed at you,” Senior answered.
“No, he did not. In fact, he whispered! You’re the one who’s being loud. In fact, if your voice were any higher, I bet you’d break one of the glasses in here!”
“YOU’VE GOT EVERYTHING BACKWARDS!!!!!!” screamed Junior, as loud as his voice could go. But no one seemed to hear him.
“What?” said the man. He brought his ear closer to Junior’s mouth. “Stop mouthing words. I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”
“This guy is nuts,” Junior whispered in his dad’s ear. Suddenly the chatter stopped. Everybody turned to Junior. It was so quiet, you could have heard a fly walking on carpet. Senior looked at his son in disbelief. He could not believe his son would be this rude!
Junior looked around the room. He slipped back a little bit.
“Was it something I said?”
TO BE CONTINUED
No comments:
Post a Comment