Alien-napped

    “Help!” James screamed while being dragged away by big purple aliens.

It was a normal, cold Martian night. James Bojingles was an ordinary kid. Besides the fact that he was the only blond kid in his settlement. He was also very tall. He was ten years old, people always called him the smartest in the settlement. James was sleeping with his family in his small Mars settlement during the Martian winter of 2125.

His settlement was in the middle of the red Martian desert, with the occasional Martian Greenleaf tree every few yards. It had one store called Mars Red Goods, a few tents and a MarsBerry farm. From where James was, (the middle of the settlement) the store was north of him, the farm was south and the tents were spread all around. He was woken up by something crashing to the ground. He had thought someone dropped something, little did he know. It was a huge alien ship. It had already been 86 years since the alien invasion of Earth. No one thought something that bad would happen again. Until now.

“Let me go!” he cried. No one had heard his calls for help. He was worried.

The aliens dragged him through his settlement and the neighboring one, which was on the top of the canyon that they called Tall Guy because of the height. He was able to free his arm from the alien’s grip, but not for long; eventually, they caught him. Then they brought him to the PlanetWrecker, a huge ship the size of a whole settlement with rockets all over the back. When they got close a door opened and a staircase slid out. He wondered, what are they going to do? Soon he found out.

“Let me out of here!” James screamed while being locked in a tiny cell.

The cell had a bed that looked like it was from the 2000’s. The bed had one flat pillow and a light blue blanket and a rusty toilet behind a door in the back of the cell. There were also lasers to keep him in. He had an idea though, What if I block the lasers? So he tried to block them with the blanket from the bed. He got thrown back! Well, I won’t try that again. But then he saw something; more prisoners! He got a new idea, I can ask them for help!

“Can you help me?” James whispered to the alien named Targle, a 125 year old blue alien across from him, who’s from the planet Gorbingle. But to Targle it sounded like how it would look if a cat danced on a keyboard.

“Huh?” Targle whispered back. But at first James didn’t understand. Eventually he found out they couldn’t talk to each other.

“Can you help me then?” He whispered to the person next to him whose name was Ben Twinkletoes, another ten year old like James from Earth. He didn’t respond.

Then a guard came with a translator and said, “No talking to others.”

On his way out he dropped the translator and James took it. Then an amazing idea popped into his head, I can use the translator to talk to Targle.

“Can you help me?” he asked once again, this time more desperate.

But Targle heard, “Washing machine in a banana.”

So he responded with, “What are you talking about?”

James heard, “Uranus has purple strawberries.” It was clear he couldn’t use the translator.

When James figured out that the translator didn’t work a guard came and snatched it from his hand. But this must be the clumsiest guard ever because he dropped a notepad while walking away. As soon as he did James grabbed it with cat-like reflexes. He shoved it under his blanket. Then he laid down, tossing and turning. It took him around an hour to fall asleep.

He was woken up by someone saying it was time for dinner, it was a guard, but a different one. He was much shorter than the other guard, and skinnier.

“Ok,” James said wearily while getting out of the bed.

This was the last full day until they made it to Goofinius 11. During lunch he took a spoon with a flat end and shoved it in his pocket just in case. He also grabbed a fork and he shoved it in his pocket. When he got back to the cell he noticed that he dropped the fork and it was in Targle’s cell.

“Fork, to me,” he whispered. He knew he could understand that.

Targle slid the fork across the floor and James snatched it up then he put it in his pocket. He had an idea. He knew the cell opening button was close, a fork distance away from his cell. He thought, I can use the fork to press the button and I’ll be free. He grabbed the fork from his pocket full of random things and used the fork to reach the button. An alarm went off! He saw seven guards run down the hallway. I’m done. He thought. But they weren’t going for him, they were going for Ben. He had the same idea as James but Ben pressed the button before him.

James passed him a note with a picture and a question mark, asking why he did that.

Ben passed it back and wrote, “No trouble,” with an arrow pointing at James. Then the aliens grabbed Ben.

The alien with the translator asked, “Why did you do that?”

“I don’t like the cell,” Ben complained. Which was the only thing Ben said that James could understand.

“Too bad,” the alien said, then stormed off.

James was so tired after listening to them that his eyelids could barely stay open, so he went to sleep. But this time he slept better. He woke up around eight o’clock in the morning and remembered, This is the day we land on Goofinius 11. Oh no. They were going to be landing at one o’clock in the afternoon during lunch.

Meanwhile Ben was preparing. He took stuff he knew he would need. He was also making a strange looking device using the lasers of the cell to weld the wires together. James didn’t know what it was. But Ben knew exactly what he was doing. Ben’s dad was an engineer and taught him a lot before he was taken.

James decided to go back to sleep because he didn’t know what else to do.

“Wake up,” said an alien almost as tall as the ceiling, named General Kinkletoes, while staring down on him. “It’s lunch time.”

James didn’t say a single word, he just got up and went to the cafeteria. On his way he spotted a screwdriver and grabbed it as fast as possible. Then he continued to the cafeteria. Lunch was what looked like alien spaghetti and meatballs. He sat at the assigned spot for him at the front table. Then, crash! They finally landed on Goofinius 11.

“Follow me,” General Kinkletoes said sternly.

They were all escorted off the PlanetWrecker by twelve aliens and brought to a prison. Around the prison there was a huge wall and a huge desert. The prison was outside of a huge city called GooferBoggle. The cell was almost the same besides the giant vent above the bed. James just sat there for a bit when he got an amazing idea, I can use the screwdriver to open the vent. Then he sat making sure there was no chance anything bad could happen.

While James was thinking about that, Ben was still working on his weird device. Then James slipped him a note with a picture of James crawling through a vent. James had climbed into the vent, he saw freedom and he started to crawl faster. Then the vent broke and he fell straight into an alien meeting room.

“Um… Oops?” James said, confused while looking around. Everybody was confused why a prisoner fell from the ceiling.

“Get him!” an alien commander yelled while pointing at James. Soon, the whole room was after him.

He ran up and down the halls and then he was cornered in the cafeteria with eight guards surrounding him. He slid through a tall alien’s legs but was caught in what felt like one second after that.

“This should teach you,” the alien commander said while locking James in what looked like a super-sized tin can.

Then a note was slid under the door. “Three hours,” it read.

He was confused. What could it mean? Three hours until I’m out? Then he decided he would just sit there and think. He had so many questions that did not have answers. Then he went to sleep because he didn’t know what else to do, until he was rudely awoken by what sounded like a fire alarm. That was because it was.

Then a guard ran to his cell, unlocked it and yelled, “Follow me!”

Next thing he knew he was sprinting out of the building with the guards, Ben, Targle and the other prisoners were running out too. He was happy to be out. Then he looked behind himself and saw Ben running back into the building that was engulfed in flames. No one could stop him, and no one tried to. Three minutes after he ran in he was out and he had something in his hand. James thought the reason Ben ran in was to grab something, though he didn’t know what.

“Come here!” The commander yelled while walking toward the PlanetWrecker.

In two minutes everyone was onboard the PlanetWrecker. A guard told James that they were flying to another part of Goofinius 11 called GooberTown. He was back in the same cell as before, an old bed and a rusty toilet behind the door in the back of the cell. But in the corner he saw an escape method, a chisel with a bag sitting next to it.

But first he wrote a note to ask what Ben’s cell looked like. When he got it back there was also a chisel. James tried to make Ben join him on his escape plan by telling him through a note, but he refused.

“No notes,” a guard said as he snatched James’ notepad. That didn’t change anything though because James had another notepad, but he was going to keep it a secret.

As James was looking around he noticed Targle wasn’t across from him. He was confused. Where is he? Did he make it out? He wasn’t sure what happened to Targle. Then he saw Targle walking down the hallway with a guard to the side of him. The guard left and James remembered the chisel and without a second thought, he chiseled away at the wall. He decided to chisel in the area where the toilet was because it was behind a door.

Ben was working on a second device. He finished the one that he started before. It looked like a speaker and walkie-talkie fusion that you could strap to your arm. James didn’t know where Ben was getting the parts. He thought he might’ve had them the whole time, but there were other possibilities.

A guard was walking towards James’ cell. “What are you doing?” the guard asked loudly.

He replied, “Nothing,” in a nervous voice.

He heard the guard walk away, so he kept going. Finally, after forty-five minutes he made a hole in the wall, but it wasn’t big enough to fit through. He hit the wall around it then he grabbed his bag and he was out of his cell. He ran around corners left and right. The ship was so big it felt like a maze, but finally he found his way to the door. He grabbed a parachute, opened the door and jumped out into the open Goofinius forest below.

Then James heard a voice. He was confused until he realized Ben put his speaker-looking device in his bag. But before he could look inside the bag he landed in the middle of a pond with purple water surrounded by trees the size of the smallest canyon on Mars, about 100 feet tall. The trees were aqua colored. There were also smaller trees behind the humongous trees of the same color.

“Hello?” James said, confused.

A choppy voice replied, “Why’d you jump out?” It was Ben!

“I need to get home,” James whispered back because he knew if he was too loud Ben’s walkie-talkie translator would be taken away.

But it was too late for James to be quiet because he heard someone take the walkie-talkie-like device, at least he thought so. It was Targle connecting! They chatted for a little while and for the first time since he had been alien-napped he could understand him.

“I told the guards what happened, now they’re looking for you, I’m sorry,” Targle said. “I wanted to escape together,” he continued.

“It’s fine,” James said trying to comfort Targle. “I wanted to escape together too.”

Just then he heard a third person connect, it was Ben again. Ben told James it would take about a day for them to find him using the built in tracker. So James started to prepare, but he didn’t know how.

“What do I do?” James asked. “I don’t know how to survive in the wild.”

“Make or find tools then get shelter,” Ben replied, more confused than ever that James didn’t know that.

“Got it,” James said as he started to scavenge for sharp rocks in a cave to make an ax. He connected the rock to a stick with a wire he found in his bag.

He picked up his new ax and got ready to chop down a tree when Ben told him, “You shouldn’t chop down a big tree yet.” Ben was right on time.

James went to a smaller tree behind the huge tree and chopped that one down. He noticed the inner wood from the tree was yellow. He grabbed about fifteen logs and got to the building.

Meanwhile Targle and Ben arrived in the outer GooberTown prison and they were making a plan. Ben was going to give James directions to build a ship using his engineering knowledge so he could fly it to them and escape.

“James, have you finished building yet?” Ben asked.

“Yeah, just finished,” James said, exhausted. “It was the most boring thing ever.”

“Ok, you should get some rest so I’ll leave you alone, good night,” Ben said, then shut off the walkie-talkie device.

James laid down to try to get to sleep but he felt like someone, or something was watching him. He peeked out of his little makeshift house but saw nothing. He looked all around and still saw nothing. He was confused.

“Is anybody here?” James asked, yet he got no response.

James went to sleep and in the morning he went to collect materials for the ship Ben was instructing him to build.

“Connect the wires to the motor and you’re done,” Ben instructed.

James grabbed the wires, twisted them around the motor and, Boom! The whole ship had exploded! Now James had to start all over again. He made a second ship, but smaller and that still didn’t work. He had to replan the whole ship.

“Maybe you should build giant fans and make it a hover ship,” Ben suggested as James complained about his ship.

“Good idea, Ben,” James said as he thought about it. Then he got to work.

He made big metal blades, turned them into two giant fans and connected them to the motor. It finally worked after hours and hours of hard work.

Ben helped him with directions. “You want to go straight north.”

“Got it,” James said as he turned the ship around.

James started to fly forward toward GooberTown. He went higher up in the air but not high enough because he hit a tree! He jumped out the window onto the wing of the ship. The only problem, it was super dangerous! He took a wrench with him, fixed the wing and started to fly again.

“How’d you do that?” Ben questioned.

James sarcastically replied, “Magic.”

“Ok, stop joking,” said Ben.

“Ok,” James said as he nearly missed hitting another tree.

James finally made it to the prison, only after almost hitting a mountain and actually hitting a tree.

“Are you here yet?” Ben asked.

“Yes I am,” James said while slowing down.

“Come through the back wall,” Ben said while looking down the hallway. “There’s no guards there.”

“Got it,” James said while turning the ship around.

He put a chain on the back wall then connected it to the ship, flew forward and the wall busted open. Then he ran down the hallway, got Targle and Ben out of their cells and started to fly away. As he took off, three police ships started to chase him. While twisting and turning through mountaintops a fan blade hit a mountain peak and the ship started to slow down. At the same time, a police ship shot a laser at their ship and it nailed the wing.

“Ben hold the wheel!” James said while climbing out the ship.

Ben looked at James confused and asked, “What?”

But it was too late. James had climbed out of the ship and Ben didn’t have the wheel. James slid straight off the wing through the clouds and landed on a huge bouncy mushroom. He would have to build a whole new ship.

“We crashed straight into the ground and a guard is after us,” Targle muttered out of breath.

“I’m in the middle of a forest!” James complained.

Then James couldn’t hear Targle anymore. Did he get caught? He thought. Then he started to build a new ship, he remembered a few things he used to build the other ship. But James wanted to make it better by reinforcing the wings so if it gets shot in the wing again it won’t completely break it. Finally he finished building.

“Ben? Are you here?” James asked.

“Yes, but I’m back in a cell,” Ben replied.

“Where is it?” James questioned.

“It’s the same one as before,” answered Ben.

“I’ll get there,” James said while turning the ship on.

James flew between (and almost into) the dark brown trees out towards GooberTown. He had seen a police ship while flying to the prison and had to hide. He finally made it all the way to the prison after four long hours.

After circling the building a few times James asked, “Where do I come in?”

“There is no safe side of the building, there are at least five guards in every hallway. You need to make a distraction,” replied Ben.

“Like what?” James asked, annoyed.

“A really loud noise,” Ben answered.

“Ok, got it,” James said while landing far enough away from the prison so that he was not seen.

He went to collect more metal materials so he could make a noise machine by banging the metal together. He attached the metal to a spinning motor. Finally he was done building his noise machine. Then he sneaked toward the prison and planted his noise maker by the front door so he could sneak in through the back.

James ran to the back and hid behind a bush. “I put it down, I’m turning it on in, 3, 2, 1.”

The noise machine was louder than he expected. It led every single guard to the front.

“Ok, now go to the door in the back, I’ll probably be able to push it open by a bit,” Ben told James while sticking his arm through the narrow gap between the lasers.

“I’ll pull the rest open,” James said as he reached the door.

He got inside and was able to get Ben and Targle out of their cells and ran right back out. They hid in the forest behind the prison. Eventually they ran to the ship and started to fly off.

“Where are we going?” Targle asked.

“Don’t really know, just somewhere where people can’t find us,” James replied, but made a crucial mistake. He wasn’t focused on flying. He turned back and saw he narrowly missed a mountain peak. But after the relief of knowing he didn’t crash, a huge police ship shot a laser straight at them. Luckily he narrowly dodged it. But that couldn’t be said, for the next laser fired at them. It hit the engine and sent them spiraling into the ground.

“Where are we?” asked Ben.

“Your guess is probably as good as mine,” Targle responded.

“Guys, relax, we can just build a new ship. A bigger one that can make it through the atmosphere,” said James while making a pickaxe. “Come on, let’s go mining. I made you both pickaxes too.”

“Ok,” Targle and Ben said at the same time while walking towards the huge cave.

As they got deeper into the cave they saw huge orange spiders everywhere. But they were still able to get the metal they needed. After many long trips back and forth they still didn’t have enough metal.

It was all normal business of metal collection until Ben said, “Guys! I think I found diamonds!”

“Where?” James asked.

“In the small tunnel to the right,” replied Ben.

James started walking down the tunnel but that was when he heard a noise. A crumbling noise. Then some of the cave started to cave in behind him. He had to have Targle lift the rocks out of the way so he could get out after he retrieved Ben.

Ben told James, “I have all the plans, I wrote them down. Let’s get building!”

They all started building the ship. It took a long time but finally they had finished the ship.

“Guys I’m going to sleep,” Ben said while walking to the hammock he built.

“Ok,” responded James and soon they were all asleep.

When James woke up, he went to add some final touches to the ship, like a GPS tracker. Eventually Targle and Ben woke up and they took off.

“How are we going to get back to our planets?” asked Ben.

“I’ll drop you guys off,” James replied.

But their happy flying didn’t last long because a group of police ships were now chasing them. All James could hear was, pew, pew. James had somehow dodged every laser fired at him. But his laser dodging skills didn’t last long because the ship got hit in its rocket booster.

James started to put his special spacesuit on and told Ben, “Keep the ship straight, I need to fix the booster.”

“Ok,” Ben responded.

James tied himself to the ship and went to the back. Luckily he made an extra booster earlier, just in case something like this happened. Swiftly he took off the broken booster and installed the new one. James got back in after making sure the police were gone.

“Targle’s planet is the blue and orange one it’s called Gorbingle,” James informed Ben.

“Ok,” Ben replied while turning toward Gorbingle.

They had finally made it to Gorbingle and Targle said while getting off the ship, “Bye guys!”

Then he dropped Ben off at Earth, “I’ll visit sometime!” he said while getting off the ship.

Soon James was alone and flying back to Mars. He already missed Targle and Ben but he planned to visit them soon.

He finally made it back to Mars and saw his parents. He ran up to them and gave them a hug, “Hi Mom and Dad!”

“Hi, James. Where have you been?” his dad asked.

“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later,” James responded. He heard his walkie-talkie-like translator make a noise. “Give me a second.”

“Ok,” his dad agreed.

It was Ben he said, scared, “I think I see aliens walking toward me!”