The eerie music started to play. That’s how it all started. It was all downhill from there. And then I couldn’t believe what I saw: a piano appeared in the middle of the room. I can’t remember what happened next, but I had a strange vision that an alien came into the room and started playing the piano. I woke up in a hospital bed wearing a blue and white flowered hospital gown in a room with a guy who was wearing a white lab coat and with hair that looked tossed about, like the hair of a mad scientist. Suddenly he started hitting me with questions.
“What is your name?!”
“Where do you live?!”
“Who are your parents?!”
“How old are you?!”
I tried to speak. I really did. But nothing came out.
“Speak!!! Tell me everything!!!”
Then I remembered that I had been taking sign language at Corral Academy for the past three or four years. Corral Academy is a private school specializing in sign language. My grandfather is deaf, and it was the closest sign language school around. And the best.
“Do you speak sign language?” I signed.
And he signed back, “Of course I do. Where do you think you are?! The land of the English-speaking people?! Now, tell me EVERYTHING!!!”
My name is Chloe and I am fourteen years old. My mother disappeared in 3021 when I was 7 years old in a mysterious incident with aliens. Or maybe it was yesterday. I am not thinking straight right now. Ever since, I have been terrified of aliens and unexpected things. Then it was my turn to ask the questions.
“Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here? Now you have to tell me everything.”
“Please!! Do you know why can’t I talk?” He just stood there, staring at me like I was the craziest person he had ever seen. I stared back at him. Then I went crazy.
“Why aren’t you saying anything about it?!!!!!!!!!!!?!”
I started chasing him around the room with flailing arms.
“YOU PROMISED!!!!!!!!!”
“Yes, but—”
“NO BUTS!! THERE ARE NO EXCUSES!!!”
“Calm. Down.”
“YOU WANT ME TO CALM DOWN? TELL ME EVERYTHING THEN!!!!!”
“Okay, okay fine.”
“You are at the Inner Galaxy Hospital, address 1563 Inner Galaxy Way, Bunchen, Yilo Galaxy. I am a psychologist, sent by the board of the galaxy. You are here because the aliens you saw captured you because you saw them at work, trying to get samples of humans to clone them. Your mother came here seven years ago because she saw them as well.”
“So then why didn’t the other people who saw it come here?”
“There were other people who saw it?! AND YOU ARE ONLY TELLING ME NOW?!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Take over the world.” He said into a thingy that looked a little like a walkie talkie as he left the room, “And do it quickly.”
Ok. I know that there is a possibility that my mom is somewhere in this building. If she is, she would probably know exactly what to do. I remember when I was little she used to give me all the advice I could ever want. She was the best. Just the thought of getting her back got me excited… But right now I had other things to think about… I looked out the window, thinking about the day mom disappeared. It was a really nice day out and I woke up thinking that everything would be perfect. When I got home my mom was nowhere to be found. My dad said that she went to the basement to do the laundry and never came back. The security cameras got fogged up mysteriously, but you could faintly see the shape of what looked a little bit like aliens, like the ones that I saw. I wonder what mom would say the story was. It would probably be different from her perspective. Why am I thinking so much?! I HAVE TO FIND HEEERRRRRRRR!!!
I started looking for the psychologist. I needed him to find out why I couldn’t speak. Anyway, it felt like there was a wool sweater around my vocal chords. I hated it. I saw the front door that he went through and tried it to see if I could get through it. It was locked. Great. Ohmygosh!!! There was a grate that I could go through maybe if I tried… No, that’s a pathetic Idea. My friend, Violet, taught me how to pick locks once. She said that one day it would come in handy, but at the time I didn’t see how it would ever come in handy. Now I understand what she was talking about. I took out a bobby pin from my messed–up bun and started to fiddle with the lock. This one seemed to be harder than the rest I had done. Maybe it required some other kind of password in addition to a key. Since this was in another galaxy completely different from the one I’m used to living in, maybe they had completely different crazy technology that we do not have so maybe this lock was going to be much harder than all of the rest that I’ve tried. Probably. But I hope not. This would be so easy if I could have just undone the lock, found my mother immediately standing out the door waiting for me, and we could just talk out a plan to escape here and come back to our world. That would just be so much easier. But, unfortunately, this is not a fairytale, where everything turns out perfect in the end and everybody lives happily ever after. There is no such thing as happily ever after to me because there is no such thing as perfect. If only. Click. I heard the sound of the door opening, only to find that there was another door, waiting for me like a prize for getting one door open. Who knows how many other doors there could be. This was going to be a hard thing to accomplish.
“What is your password?” A robotic sounding voice said.
Passwords are usually something that the person who thought up the password thinks about very often, or something that is close to their heart. Or maybe a number combination, like the address or something. Let’s see. 1563galaxyhospital. Yes. Maybe that would work. Let me try it.
“What is your password?” a robotic voice repeated.
“1563 galaxy hospital,” I said.
“Wrong password,” the robotic voice repeated. I wondered what the password could be, if that wasn’t it. 1563. Maybe that’s it. Let me try.
“1563.”
“Password correct.”
Great! Now I needed to unlock who knows how many more doors. This door had a keypad on it for a lock with numbers on it. I typed in the numbers 1563 and the door didn’t budge. I knew that it was a four-number combination, definitely. I wondered if it was a word and numbers corresponded to the letters in the word. Let’s see. I knew that the galaxy is Yilo galaxy, whatever that was. The Y is the 25th letter of the alphabet. The letter I is the 9th. L is The the 12th and O is the 15th. Now I take the first number of each number, and I have my password. Let’s see. 2911. I immediately punch the code to the robotic voice. I silently cheered as I saw the door open. Inside of the small room there was a strange painting done with ultra-color technology. I took it off of the wall to look at it. Beautiful. I noticed for the first time that there was a small safe that had a clue pinned on it — ”Think of your mother.”
I thought of the nickname that I called her—Mamaw. I typed her nickname in and it opened and inside there was a note. It said, “I am in a la, come to save me!! If you do not, the whole human race will be in danger!!! – Mamaw.”
Great! Now I had a clue! I couldn’t wait for the happily ever-after. Inside of the room there was also a keyboard that looked like it had wires that connected to the door. The door looked like it was unlocked, so I tried it to see if it was open. No. It was not open. I turned on the keyboard (I play piano in music class at my school) and started fiddling with it. Suddenly I got an idea. What if you had to play a certain melody on the keyboard and that was the pass code to get through the door?! I thought of the address again. 1563. If A was one, B was two, C was three, and so on, then that could be the key!!!!!! That meant that the melody must be AEFC!!!!!!!! I played it on the piano. Wow. That is such a strange sounding melody. Yet, it sounds strangely familiar. I was trying to think where I had heard it when suddenly it struck my mind. The sound that played on the piano when they took over my house! I was so happy I found this melody. It was probably the key to open the door I played it over and over again at the fourth time, the door opened. I went through the door to find a small room and in that room there was a boy, about my age, standing there, looking trapped.
He had long black hair, he was tall, and he was wearing the same gown that I was wearing, except mine was much more dirty and ripped by now. He hadn’t noticed me at all. I wondered if he could talk, unlike me. He looked as if I had seen him before, like the melody on the piano. So strange and familiar, it was scary. I didn’t know what to think, but I better do something. But what? I finally decided to get his attention by going in front of him and signing: “Can you talk?” So I did, and he signed back.
“No, I can’t talk.”
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“I’m from here. Aren’t you?” he asked.
“I’m from planet Earth,” I said.
“I heard about that. In my school, they talked about that,” he calmly signed to me.
“How old are you?” I signed.
“54 moons old,” he signed.
“How long is that in years?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but one moon is about 1/4 of a year, I think.”
“Oh cool we are about the same age!!!”
“Cool!”
“How did you get here?”
“It’s a long story. You?”
“It’s a long story.”
There was a door with a metal lock that looked easy to pick. This one looked easier than the rest I had already picked. They probably made it easy to pick because if we got through all the other locks, we would probably get out from this one somehow.
“Do you know how to pick a lock?” Jacob signed.
“Yes. Do you want me to pick this one?” I signed
“Yes.”
“Ok.”
I fiddled with the lock with my bobby pin.
“Uhhhhhhhhhhh… Got it!!!!!!!”
I stared at the vast universe that I could see. It was amazing. It was like standing in the middle of the Universe. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. There were so many colors. It didn’t look like this in all of the pictures that I had seen. It was mostly green. It looked more like the Northern Lights than what it actually was.
I signed to him. “Is this where you lived?”
“Yes, but there’s more to it than that, but I’m not sure if I can tell you. I have to get to know you a little bit better before I tell you.”
My hands hurt from signing all the time. I wished I could have my voice back. It was so weird not to be able to talk. I was starting to forget what it was like to talk.
We started to walk around and look at what was around me instead of the sky. It looked like it would never end, like I was on top of the world. The sky was endless. I was going to find where my mom was. I thought about the clue that my mom had left me.
“Jacob, there is something I have to tell you,” I signed.
“Yes?” he signed.
“My mom is somewhere outside here. In a lab somewhere. She is trapped and she needs my help. You live here, so you should know. Do you know of any labs around here?”
“Yes, I do. There are two in the area. The closest one is about 5 quims away.”
“Okay. That’s not that far. I can do that. Come on let’s go.”
We started walking and walking and finally, we reached somewhere that looked like the end of the Universe. It was fast, black, nothingness. There were hundreds of parachutes stacked next to it.
“You have to jump,” signed Jacob.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I signed back.
“Here I’ll show you,” and he jumped without a parachute.
“Wait, you forgot a parachute.” I was longing to be able to talk because I didn’t want to lose my companion. We were starting to be friends.
Great, now I had lost two people along my adventure. I guess I had no choice. I had to jump in order to get to the lab and find my mom. I grabbed a lime-green parachute, strapped it on my back, and jumped.
I landed on a tiny island of isolation. There was one teeny building. I suppose that was the lab. It was a 5-foot, modern building, kind of like a teeny, tiny version of the Empire State Building. I circled the building once or twice to try to find a door. There was only one window stretched around it like a band. I decided to try and break in. Hopefully, this was the right lab. I wished Jacob was here. He might know a better way to get in. Luckily, I had my pen knife with me; I never leave home without it. I used it to cross an x on it and then I broke it with my fist. Ow, that hurt. I wish I hadn’t done that. Maybe my mom would have some ointment or something. The last time she had taken care of me when I was sick or helped me when I wasn’t feeling well was 7 years ago.
There was good-sized hole for me to go through. I climbed through it and the inside was so much bigger than the outside. I was amazed. There was something that looked like a full-size ferris wheel. There was nobody in there. I climbed on the ferris wheel, thinking that maybe it would lead me somewhere. The second I set foot on the first gondola, it started to move, fast. I climbed inside frantically as it was moving. I was hooked on by two-feet, but my head was hanging down. This was the scariest thing I have done, even scarier than the parachute. It stopped when I was at the very top. For the first time I saw a secret door in the ceiling. I pushed it to see if it would open, and it did. I climbed up there and inside was a room that looked like a lab. Inside strapped up in a chair was… my Mother!!!
Chapter nine:
I wanted to scream SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BAD!!!
I could see from the look on her face that she could see me. I frantically started to untie the knots in the rope that was tying her in the chair. I undid the cloth that was tying her mouth shut. I hope she could talk. “Can you talk?” I signed. My mother went to the same school I go to, therefore she knows sign language.
“No” she signed. She frantically started to sign to the aliens. “Give us our voices back or else I will tell the whole world about your evil plot!!”
“Yeah right. Nice try, but no way.”
“And we are not kidding. I have my all-galaxy cell phone on me.” I signed to them. “I am a close friend with the ruler of the world’s daughter!!” I said to the aliens. I hadn’t told them before because I wanted to know that my mother was safe first. All of a sudden, I didn’t have that feeling like there was a wool sweater around my neck! “Mamaw?” I stood in shock for a moment. I never realized how great it was to be able to talk!! “Come on, Mamaw!!!!!! Lets get out of here!!!”
And so we ran, faster than the wind, onto the ferris wheel, out through the broken window, and onto the island and the vast, neverending, universe above us. I strapped into a parachute and I started soaring. “Mamaw, strap into that parachute!” She did, and she quickly caught up to me. “So, mamaw, tell me everything!!! Starting from when you left, long ago.”
“Some aliens kidnapped me, because I saw them. They made me mute, so that I wouldn’t complain. I then learned, by eavesdropping, that they were going to use me to make evil clones that appeared human but were evil to use against us. They have been trying for years now, without succeeding. I have been messing up their equipment and they have not figured me out. Thank you for coming to get me. I can’t believe you found that note. It was the only time the aliens left me unsupervised.”
I then told her what happened to me, every single little detail. I was so happy. I felt this sort of descending feeling. I looked down and saw planet earth below me. How did the parachutes know where to go? Our city was getting closer and I could see our building. Suddenly our parachutes disappeared and we were free falling. Finally we landed, safe and sound. We walked up the stairs to the third floor and we went into our apartment. The first thing we saw was my dad.
We automatically all embraced each other in a big hug. “What happened to you guys? It was scary—my wife disappeared and then my daughter—what was I supposed to do? Where did you go?” So we told him the whole story, and it was a happy ending for everybody.That night was scary though. I put on some music to listen to, and suddenly all that I heard was that creepy melody. I tried to stop the music, but it wouldn’t stop. It just kept playing on and on. Finally I just threw it out the window and I never heard that melody again.
Now I am 21 years old, and I recently thought of something. What ever happened to Jacob? So I looked his name up on the computer and it said that he was the youngest person ever to go to outer space but disappeared mysteriously. Then they said he recently appeared again, and was asked many questions for that matter, but he refused to answer any of them. I am glad he is safe. That was what he wanted to tell me.