Strikeout of the Bleacher Weenies Read online

  Bing, bong.

  Fling.

  “I’m you,” she said, the instant the door opened. I guess she knew I’d already gotten the first message, about how she was from the future.

  She went on. “I don’t have much time.” Her eyes drifted from me, and she said, “We keep extending the duration. It’s all based on synchronizing subatomic particles with the right harmonics. Pretty fascinating. Anyhow, I need to tell you—”

  Collapse, zoom, bye.

  So that’s why she looked like Mom, but had Dad’s eyes. She wasn’t Mom. She was me from the future.

  Some kids would have a hard time believing time travel was possible. Not me. I was fascinated by it. Ever since I was little and discovered science, I’ve wanted to work on something spectacular and world-changing when I got out of college, like teleportation or immortality. I loved the idea that I grew up to work on time travel. And, as for proof that she was really me and not someone playing an elaborate joke, the way she—I mean I … or maybe we?—got distracted was exactly how I acted.

  I stayed where I was, with the door open. I wanted to see her, I mean me, arrive.

  As I expected, her arrival was like the zooming departure played in reverse. A bright dot shot toward me from forty-five degrees above the horizon, expanding until it became my future self on the porch.

  This time, I grabbed her arm. “Get right to the message!” I said. I shivered at the possibilities a message from the future could contain. She could tell me what stock to buy, or what boy to watch out for, or even which college to go to.

  But if she warned me about something, wouldn’t that change the future? And then, what if, because of that change, I didn’t invent time travel?

  Or what if she gave me the secret to time travel! What an amazing paradox. I invent time travel, and then go back to tell myself how to invent time travel. I loved the way that idea twisted reality into a pretzel, or a Möbius strip. I imagined infinite loops of time and space.

  I realized she’d been talking. And I hadn’t been listening.

  Collapse, zoom, bye.

  I waited for the next visit. She was older than Mom this time. A lot older. It sort of creeped me out to see myself as an old lady, but it also comforted me to know that I’d live a long life.

  “Alexis,” she said, grabbing my arm.

  “What?”

  “You left your fudge bar on the counter. It’s melting and dripping all over the floor. And Mom is coming home early. Hurry. Go clean up your mess.”

  Collapse, zoom, bye.

  That was it? A lifetime spent developing and improving time travel, and “your fudge bar is melting” is the message I gave myself?

  Oh, fudge. I guess I’d put it down when the bell rang.

  As I headed for the kitchen to see what was left of my fudgy treat, I started thinking about giving myself a more useful message when it was my turn to come back. The fudge bar had already dripped down the side of the counter and onto the linoleum. I grabbed a paper towel.

  Wait a minute …

  The only reason I’d put the fudge bar down in the first place was because the doorbell rang. And the only reason the doorbell rang was because I’d come back to warn myself about the fudge bar. But if the future me had never come back, the present me wouldn’t have needed a warning. I’d caused myself to do the very thing I’d warned myself about. And wouldn’t it have been smarter to come back to a time before I took the fudge bar out of the freezer, so I could stop it from happening?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the front door. This time, it was opened with a key. Mom came in and went directly to the kitchen.

  I stood there, paper towel in hand. I hadn’t had a chance to clean up the drips yet.

  “Alexis!” Mom shouted. “Look at that mess. You are grounded.”

  “It’s not my fault,” I said.

  Mom stared at me.

  “Not yet, at least,” I said.

  Mom shook her head and walked out of the kitchen.

  I realized there was no way I could explain things to her. So I got to work cleaning up my mess. This mess, at least. I’d have to wait to see how I dealt with the time-travel mess when it was my turn to go back to talk to myself. But I was sort of eager to find out.

  IN WARM BLOOD

  It’s great being rich. I feel sorry for kids who can’t have everything they want. My dad has billions. Really. Not like when someone says, “I have a billion comic books.” No. It’s like my tutor, Leonard, taught me. When you’re just using billions to mean “a whole lot,” that’s a figurative expression. But, with my Dad, when I say billions, it’s literal. He has at least two billion dollars. He buys me anything I want. Because, really, you can spend five or ten million without making any sort of dent in a billion.

  If I wanted my own castle, I could have it. If I wanted a tank that could totally blow the castle to bits, I could have that, too. And I did.

  So, when I heard about DinoShoot Adventures, and told Dad I wanted to do that, he said sure. It didn’t matter that it cost twelve million dollars. For him, that was pocket change.

  Dad was too busy to go with me to set things up, so he had Marsdon, our head butler, escort me to DinoShoot headquarters. Dad had already wired the money to them. They were real nice to me when I walked in. I’m used to that. Anyone who isn’t nice to me is going to hear about it from Dad. One time, people were snotty to me in a clothing store, so Dad bought the store and fired all the employees. I stood by the door and watched as they left. Two of the women were crying. I enjoyed seeing them get the treatment they deserved.

  When we got to DinoShoot, a receptionist sent us right in to the main office. “Welcome, Kenneth,” a man in a nicely tailored suit and light-blue silk shirt said. “I’m Mr. Fuller. I’ll be helping you select the subject of your Primordial Harvesting Experience.”

  Primordial Harvesting Experience? That didn’t sound like fun. “I’m here to blow away a dinosaur,” I said. I held up my hands like I was clutching a rifle, and I fired off a shot. “Bang!”

  “Of course,” he said. “That’s exactly the experience we offer. You will be able to harvest—I mean, blow away—the dinosaur of your choice. Do you have a species in mind, or would you like to browse the offerings?” He pointed to a touch screen that covered most of the wall behind his desk. It was filled with photographs of dinosaurs.

  But I’d already given my choice a lot of thought. The tyrannosaurus is the best-known carnivore, except maybe for the velociraptors from Jurassic Park. And the brontosaurus, or apatosaurus, is the biggest commonly known dinosaur. But hunting a huge herbivore would be like going after an enormous cow. It wouldn’t be the kind of thrill I needed. I wanted to combine large and dangerous, and take on the biggest carnivore. That would give me a trophy my friends would envy.

  “Spinosaurus,” I said. The name wasn’t as cool as Giganotosaurus, but the spinosaurus was bigger, and its head would look awesome in my game room.

  “Very good.” Mr. Fuller smiled and nodded, like the waiters do at the fancy restaurants Dad takes me to when he’s celebrating a business victory. “Let’s get you trained and outfitted.”

  “Trained?” I asked.

  “You will be using an extremely high-powered weapon,” he said. “It’s been engineered to reduce recoil as much as possible, but it’s still best to get the feel of it before starting your adventure.”

  “I’m an expert,” I said. One of Dad’s businesses sells weapons. He’s let me try out most of them. I could handle whatever they gave me. I’ve even fired a rocket launcher.

  “Very well.” Mr. Fuller pressed a button on his desk. A guy dressed in safari clothes came in through a side door. He looked tough enough to fight a rhino bare-handed.

  Mr. Fuller introduced us. “This is Darrin Claymore. He’s our top guide. We reserve him for only our most important and valued clients. He’ll take good care of you.”

  Darrin held out his hand. We shook. His grip was so solid,
I felt like I’d wedged my hand between two rocks. “It will be the experience of a lifetime, lad,” he said.

  I normally don’t like being called things like lad or son. But the way Darrin said it, the word sounded right.

  I followed him to a private room that contained an assortment of outfits for me to choose from. “The environment will be wet and hot,” Darrin said. “The Cretaceous is pretty much a swampfest.”

  “Mosquitos?” I asked.

  “As big as your head.” He tapped a holster at his belt. “I’ll handle them.”

  I selected lightweight but strong clothing that would protect me from scratches and bites, but not get too hot. After that, Darrin took me to the armory.

  “This is the only one that will stop the biggest brutes,” he said, handing me a rifle with a muzzle that was at least three inches wide. I couldn’t even guess the caliber, but it had to be enormous. I could see a variety of mechanisms, including springs and counterweights, along the barrel, and a small canister of compressed CO2 right in front of the trigger. I guess that was the stuff that suppressed the recoil.

  Darrin showed me where the safety was and how to load a round into the chamber. Then he picked up a bandoleer with extra ammo. Each bullet was about the size of a bowling pin.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to try it out on the range?” he asked. “The kick is pretty impressive.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” I said.

  “Good enough, lad. I can see you’re a man of action. So am I. Let’s do it.”

  I followed him down the hall to the other end of the building. The huge room we entered was filled with the sort of electronic equipment you’d see for controlling a space launch.

  “This way.” Darrin climbed the three steps that led to a platform in the middle of the room. There were two padded chairs on it.

  “Take a seat. You’ll feel a bit dizzy for a moment,” he said.

  I sat. So did Darrin.

  The room grew brighter. I felt as if I were sliding headfirst down a steep hill. Everything around me stretched out, like the universe was made of taffy. Then it all shot back into place.

  I wasn’t in the room anymore. The cool air of the lab had been replaced with steam. I was surrounded by giant plants in a damp, hot forest. I blinked and tried to adjust to the sudden change. Even though the air was steamy, the sunlight was bright enough to make me squint at first.

  Darrin held up a device with a screen in front and a large antenna on top. “Tracker,” he said. “It picks up all life forms larger than two tons.”

  That would include the spinosaurus. It weighed twenty tons. I could see various blips on the screen. I pointed at the biggest dot. “Is that one?”

  Darrin shook his head. “Too small. But we’re in the right region. Come on—let’s take a hike.”

  I followed him, sticking to the path he wove through the towering plants. Fairly soon, we saw a large herbivore grazing in a clearing. “Want something easy?” Darrin asked. “You can bag this monster and be home in time for lunch.”

  “No thanks.”

  We pushed on. It was hard moving through the jungle, but I was in great shape. Last year, Dad bought me a membership in the best gym in town, and my trainer made sure I got a good workout. After about two hours, Darrin stopped in his tracks and tapped the screen.

  “Thar she blows,” he said.

  “Huh?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I found one. Big one. Biggest I’ve ever seen. What a trophy this is going to be, lad. We’ll both be bragging about this beauty for years. Come on, it’s just across that ridge.”

  I could feel my blood pumping through my veins in anticipation of the kill as I followed Darrin up a steep slope. We had to work our way around several gaping pits and past two thick stands of dense plant growth.

  When we crested the ridge, I gasped. The spinosaurus was even larger than I could have imagined. It was like a bulldozer had grown spines and come to life. Not like a regular earth mover you’d see on a construction site, but one of the gigantic ones you see at the bottom of mines and quarries.

  “Wow…” I let the word drift from my mouth.

  “Yeah, wow,” Darrin said. “What a beauty. Ready to kill it?”

  A spark of doubt crossed my mind as I heard his bluntly phrased words, but it was drowned by the idea of blowing the spinosaurus away with one perfectly placed shot. “Yeah. I’m ready.” I raised the rifle.

  “Hold on,” Darrin said, putting a hand on my arm. “It’s too far away. Besides—it’s more fun to shoot them when they’re charging straight at you. There’s no feeling like it.”

  “How do we get it to charge?” I asked.

  “We don’t. I do,” he said. “That’s why they pay me such a generous salary. Wait here.”

  He headed down the ridge until he was about fifty yards from the dinosaur. Then he shouted and waved his hands. I wondered whether something so big would even notice something so relatively small. But I guess you don’t get to be that big a carnivore without paying attention to every opportunity for a meal.

  The spinosaurus charged toward Darrin, who ran toward me. The earth vibrated beneath my feet like a massive coal train was passing by. I raised the rifle, sighted on the dinosaur through the scope, and waited for the ping that would tell me my target was within range. The stock and barrel were heavy, but I managed to keep them level.

  The rifle pinged.

  I fired at the dinosaur’s chest.

  “Ahhhh!” The scream shot from me as I got slammed in my own chest with the recoil.

  The kick knocked me right off my feet and sent me tumbling backward. The spinosaurus was still charging. I fell hard and kept rolling. I caught a blurry view of Darrin, halfway down the hill, leaping to the side and whipping around his own rifle as the spinosaurus thundered past him.

  I felt the hill drop out from under me. I’d rolled into one of the pits. I slammed down to the bottom. Overhead, the sun was blotted out as the spinosaurus reached the edge of the pit. It stood there, looking down at me like I was lunch. From this angle, it seemed impossibly tall. Then, the head moved lower and the jaws opened.

  The pit was narrow at the bottom. Probably too narrow for the head to fit. But I wasn’t taking any chances. Ignoring the pain of the recoil, I fired three more shots, aiming below the head, where the heart had to be, emptying the chamber.

  I could tell from its eyes that I had killed it. But it was too stupid to know it was dead yet. In a moment, the brain and body would agree that life had come to an end, and I’d have my trophy.

  “Got you!” I shouted. I’d never felt my heart beating with such stunning force. Darrin was right. There was no thrill like shooting a charging beast. I loaded another round into the chamber and shot it again, just for fun. I wanted to get my money’s worth. Okay—Dad’s money. But this was my adventure. This was my greatest moment.

  The spinosaurus fell forward. It dropped right over the opening of the pit, sealing me in darkness.

  My heart and body leaped from excitement to panic. I was trapped! For a moment, I lost control of my breathing. Then I reminded myself that Darrin would dig me out. Worst case, he’d go back for heavy equipment. They needed it to bring home the dinosaur trophy, anyhow. One way or another, all I had to do was wait to be rescued. The spinosaurus was no longer a threat. The pit was too narrow for it to fall in and crush me.

  “Sit tight,” I said out loud. “You just blew away a dinosaur.”

  To prove I was still in control, I fired another shot straight up at it.

  Something splashed on my head.

  I felt a warm, sticky liquid on my face. More of it flooded down around me.

  Dinosaur blood.

  It was filling the pit.

  I dropped the rifle and scrambled for the side of the pit. It was slick with blood. I tried to climb, but I fell back.

  The blood rose to my knees, then to my waist. I listened for any sound of rescue, but all I heard wa
s a gushing torrent, like someone emptying a large bucket. An endless bucket.

  Soon, the pool of blood reached my chest. I floated up until I bumped against the body of the dinosaur.

  Too soon, the blood reached my neck, and then my chin.

  I’d killed a dinosaur.

  And now, it was killing me.

  THE DUGGLY UCKLING

  There once was a duck who sat on a nest near the edge of a small pond, tending her eggs and dreaming of the days when the hatchlings would follow her as she swam across the calm surface of the water. Finally, after what seemed like forever, one of the eggs started to wiggle and shake.

  “It’s time,” she quacked.

  One by one, the eggs hatched, revealing little fluff balls of cuteness.

  “Aren’t they lovely?” she asked.

  “Indeed they are,” said a passing robin.

  Soon, there were six little ducklings drying their feathers in the afternoon sunlight. But a seventh egg didn’t hatch. The mother watched it, fearing it might never open. The thought cast a shadow on this joyful day.

  But, just after the sun set and darkness gripped the pond, the seventh egg shook as the shell was pecked at from within. Eventually, the seventh duckling emerged.

  Even in the dim light of the moon, the duck and the other ducklings could see the new hatchling well enough to know that this one was different.

  “Not pretty,” the mother said.

  “Worse than that,” said duckling number one. “Look at those ugly feathers.”

  “Too ugly to be a duckling,” said number two. “And what a strange shade of yellow.”

  “Right!” said number three. “That’s not a duckling. It’s an uckling.”

  “A duggly uckling,” said number four. “With a big, fat bill.”

  Number five and number six were too busy gagging to add their comments.

  As for the duggly uckling, she stood there, sad and lonely, wondering why her welcome into the world had been so harsh and cruel. In the morning, she waddled away.

  The next day, as the uckling searched for somewhere to call home, she met a rabbit.