“That was a good plan, J.Lo.”

“I am quietly proud,” he said through the high whine of the shrinking pillows.

Slushious couldn’t be driven after we lost the Snark’s Adjustable Manifold, but it still floated, so it wasn’t too difficult to push once the Safetypillows disappeared again. We moved it as far as we could from the arroyo, in case any Gorg came poking around. We pushed around the edge of the city until about five or six in the morning, when the air was waking and opening its big blue eyes. The birds were singing, and I felt weirdly happy, considering we were talking about all the things that didn’t exist anymore, now that the Boov and Gorg had arrived. We hid Slushious in a car wash, between the part with the huge spinning brushes and the part like a big pasta maker.

“There used to be a ton of TV channels, maybe hundreds. Now there’s just the Emergency Broadcast System.”

“Hm.”

“And there’s no World Series this year. Probably no baseball teams at all, because there are no states. And…no countries anymore, either. Not really.”

“Mm,” said J.Lo. “I am not knowing if these countries were evers such a good idea in the first place.”

He frowned. “Which place is this first place, anyways?” he asked, looking at the atlas. “Is it Delaware?”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “About countries, I mean.”

“Yes. And I am thinking, if the baseball was being played before, it is still being to.”

“Maybe.”

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“And televisions will return. Earthland never had so much to beginto.”

“Are you kidding? There were so many channels that they had one just for old cartoons. And about five just for new cartoons. And a music video channel that didn’t even play music videos.”

“Fhf. Boovworld had once five million channels beforeto the Purging.”

“The what?”

“The Purging.”

“Purging.”

“Yes. In the Purging, all channels but one were eliminatited, to prevents the death of society.”

“Oh. Yeah. People are always going on about how TV is going to ruin Earth, too.”

“Is well proven. Let us say, after televisions are invented, that there is only then a few channels. Three or four. We will call them A, G, Semicolon, and Pointy.”

“How about we call them A, B, C…and ABC.”

“Whatevers. Let us now think of these channels as like four cups filled with eggs. Cup A holds inside News eggs, and Sport eggs, and Variety Show eggs. Cup B has News and Animated Story eggs and Situationally Comedic eggs. So on. More big cups are added because peoples want More Choices.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Soon it is noticed that between the cups there is room for smaller cups.

“These cannot hold much. Maybies there is one with only News eggs all the time. Maybies one with only Funny. But maybies Funny is your favorite sort of egg, so you like this cup.

“Then even smaller cups are made for inbetween the small cups and even smaller between those. The more cups, the more new gaps to fill. Every kind of show is invented. Shows like Pillowbusters! And What Are People Willing to Put in Their Mouths? Or The Week in Balancing, or Watch Out, Baby Animals! Cavalcade, Big Celebrity Poomps, Guy on a Table…lots of shows.”

“So what was the problem?” I asked.

“It went out of the control,” said J.Lo. “Shows had to be recorded whilst even more shows were watched. Not enough time for seeing everything a Boov wanted to see, so some had to quit their jobs, or hires someone to watch for them.”

“Um…”

“Televisional scientists theorized a point into the future when each and everys Boov has his own show, and this show only shows him watching shows. So HighBoov decree: no more television but what the HighBoov say. And the HighBoov mostly say cooking shows.”

“Uh-huh. I’m really tired, J.Lo.”

“Yes. I also.”

I curled up next to Pig in the back of Slushious.

I awoke in the afternoon to find a note from J.Lo saying he’d gone ahead to Vicki’s to eat soap. Actually, it just said “JLO(BiKi5OP,” but I thought that was pretty good. I fed Pig and walked back through town.

I entered Vicki’s apartment, ready to launch immediately into explaining where we’d been all night. But no one was there. Not even J.Lo. I went downstairs and squinted down the hot street. Trey appeared on a corner.

“Hey! Grace, right?” he said. “We’ve all been looking for you.”

“Sorry,” I answered. “We realized we had to go check on our cat, and then we were tired so we just slept in the car, and have you seen J.Lo?”

“Who—the actress?”

“I mean JayJay.”

“Not today.”

I sighed and shaded my eyes from the hot July sun that made everything look flat and washed-out.

“Maybe he was abducted by aliens.” Trey laughed.

I didn’t think it was a very funny joke, all things considered, but I let it go.

“You don’t believe in any of the stuff they do,” I said, meaning the other Roswellians. “Do you?”

“No reason to. There are perfectly rational explanations for everything.”

“Like weather balloons?”

“Scientific balloons,” he said. “Sure. You know that NASA has a ballooning facility just a couple hours from here? They send up these enormous silver balloons all the time. I’ve seen them launch one. But the UFO nuts never tell you about that, do they?”

I was reminded of something else they probably wouldn’t tell me.

“Do you know where Chief Shouting Bear lives?” I asked.

“Gonna go see the flying saucer, huh?”

“Just for fun.”

He told me how to get to the right road, and how to follow it out of town to the big scrap yard that surrounded the Chief’s house.

“Go,” said Trey. “Look for yourself, that’s what I say. Don’t take these jokers’ word for anything. You’re not one of them, I can tell. You’re like a young me.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I’m working on it.”

“What?”

“Thanks. If you see JayJay, send him back to Vicki’s, okay? Oh, wait—look.”

I almost said, “There he is,” but stopped myself when I realized I was not looking at a Boov in a ghost suit—I was looking at a Boov.




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