My Cousin Is a Time Traveller E-Book

David Solomons

• Herausgeber: Nosy Crow
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: My Brother is a Superhero
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 277

Beschreibung

Luke's dad has bought a lot of gadgets recently and not one of them works as it's supposed to. Maybe it's because a machine-from-the-future is stalking Bromley, playing havoc with all the tech and trying to stop Star Lad going on a date. Could this be the Rise of the Machines? Luke knows what he must do - he just needs his fellow SCARF members to help, or it will be the end of everything... My Cousin is a Time-Traveller is the fifth instalment of Luke's laugh-out-loud adventures. From the author of My Brother Is a Superhero, winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the British Book Industry Awards Children's Book of the Year, and My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord, winner of a Lollies Laugh Out Loud 2017 Book Award. Books don't come much funnier than these! Packed with heart and soul, this series is perfect for fans of David Baddiel and David Walliams. My Brother Is a Superhero My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord My Evil Twin is a Supervillain My Arch-Enemy is a Brain in a Jar My Cousin is a Time-Traveller

Leseprobe

OUT OF THIS WORLD REVIEWS FOR MY BROTHER IS A SUPERHERO

“I even think my dad would like reading this book!”David, The Book Squad, The Beano

“Cosmic! Amazing! Outstanding! Probably the funniest book I have read for a long time.”Alison A. Maxwell-Cox, The School Librarian

“I was so addicted to it that my mum had to make me put it down.”Calum, aged 11

“Funny, fast moving and deftly plotted, it’s the best thing to hit the superhero world since sliced kryptonite.”Damian Kelleher, Dad Info

“You know a book is going to be good when you’re giggling after five minutes… Ideal for comic readers and superhero experts.”Nicola Lee, The Independent

“An excellent adventure story with real heart that’s also properly funny.”Andrea Reece, Lovereading4Kids

“You’ll laugh until you fall out of your tree house!”Steve Coogan

“A brilliantly funny adventure with twists, turns, crazy characters and a really hilarious ending. Fantastic!”Sam, aged 11

“Brilliantly funny.”The Bookseller

and their cousins Daniel and Ridley.

1

THAT’S THE WAY THE WOOKIE CRUMBLES

I leaned on my bedroom windowsill and gazed out at the searchlight’s vivid beam reaching up from the roof of the Civic Centre, illuminating the underside of the clouds with the letters “SL”. They stood for Star Lad. To the wider world he was a superhero, but I knew him as Zack Parker, my big brother. So far, during his short career, he’d saved Earth from, in order: a giant asteroid and a comic-book-store-owning supervillain; alien invaders disguised as my gym teacher; a world-eating Top Trump card; my Evil Twin; and a particularly annoying brain-in-a-jar and her sister. Those were his big, end-of-the-world missions, but in his role as Earth’s saviour he also carried out a host of lesser duties in between. He was out there now, no doubt rescuing some small child from a rampaging robot, or catching a falling plane, or rounding up some criminal kingpin and his henchmen.

There was a distant rumble and the horizon burst into light, the explosion sending bright-orange flames into the sky to silhouette the rooftops of our home town of Bromley.

Had to be Zack.

I might learn the details of tonight’s adventure when he returned later, but in all likelihood the only thing I’d get from him would be a grunt as he pushed past me to the fridge for a snack. He was always hungry after a mission. That was his style: peckish after, and reluctant before. He’d never wanted the responsibility of being a superhero, not from that first moment when a purple-caped, egg-headed alien called Zorbon the Decider had chosen him to save the world. Zack couldn’t see the point of having powers and it was never far from his thoughts. Earlier that evening he’d brought it up for the gazillionth time.

“And another thing,” he’d said as we washed up the dinner dishes together. “Superheroes are expensive.”

“But you don’t get paid,” I reminded him. “You’re a free service. Like that antivirus software Dad uses.”

“Yes, but there are costs associated with my exploits. Have you read the council’s latest annual report?”

“Is this a trick question?”

He scrubbed vigorously at the bottom of a pot. “It’s all in there. Itemised. The clean-up bill from just one interdimensional monster attack means they’ve had to find savings elsewhere in the budget. Did you know we’re down to a fortnightly bin collection?”

I did not. And I didn’t care.

“That’s not all.” He was getting into his stride. “I am just one hero, which means I can only deal with one incident at a time.”

“But you’re not alone. You’ve got Dark Flutter.” That was the superhero identity of our neighbour Lara Lee. She too had been turned into a superhero by Zorbon, but her powers were rather more limited than Zack’s. Essentially, she could talk to fluffy animals.

“Fine, so there are two of us. Great.” He shrugged. “So let’s take firefighting, just as an example. Think how many more fires twenty new firemen could deal with compared with just two superheroes. See, we’re expensive and inefficient.”

Studying the blaze on the horizon I caught a whiff of burning in the night air and I thought about what Zack had said. Were superheroes a waste of money? But without Star Lad, Earth would’ve been flattened by a giant asteroid, invaded by aliens, swallowed whole, or ripped apart by quantum forces. That stuff was more important than a weekly bin collection. And anyway, I liked living in a world with superheroes.

I yawned. My best friend, Serge, says that I sound like an exhausted Wookie when I yawn. It had been a long day; I’d expended a great deal of effort in avoiding a significant amount of maths and English homework. Before I went to bed I made sure to leave the window wide open for Zack to fly through when he did eventually come home. In that regard he was a bit like Peter Pan, but without the green tights and the curious attachment to fairies. Like the rest of the world, I felt safe with him out there. But unlike them, I realised as I rested my head on my Spider-Man pillow, I felt safe with him in here too. And as I drifted off into a superhero dream-filled sleep it struck me, not for the first time, that I liked living in a world with Zack. Not that I’d ever admit it to his face.

“Wake up.”

I was flying in my dreams when Zack’s voice brought me down to earth like a well-aimed kryptonite-tipped arrow. I sat up in bed, startled by the urgency of his tone. My eyes slowly adjusted to the fuzzy dark. The streetlight outside my still-open window splashed an orange glow across the bedroom floor where I saw Zack pacing anxiously. He was wearing his Star Lad costume and his cape flicked out as he turned. His mask was pushed off his face and rested against his forehead. I glanced at my Green Lantern alarm clock on the bedside table. Three a.m.

“Must have been some night,” I said. “You want to tell me about it?”

He peeled off the cape and folded it neatly into a square, tucking it under one arm. “False alarm. They didn’t need me.”

“But what about the explosion and the fire?”

“Someone was burning rubbish in their garden and it got out of control.” He removed his mask. “The fire brigade dealt with it.”

I propped myself up on my elbows. “So what have you been doing all this time?”

“Thinking,” he said. I didn’t like the way he said it. “I sent a message to Zorbon using my telepathic power. I’ve asked him to come over tomorrow.”

That was weird. Usually Zorbon showed up unannounced with a dire prophecy about the end of the world, which inevitably led to a mission for Star Lad and the rest of us. To my knowledge this was the first time that Zack had called him. I felt a creeping sense of unease.

“Luke, I’ve made a decision.” Zack paused, and by the light of the streetlamp I could see his face knot up with concern. “I’m getting rid of my superpowers.”

2

AVENGERS ASSEMBLY

“Are they transferable?”

That was the first question Serge asked me at school the next morning when I told him about Zack’s terrible decision.

I shook my head sadly. It had been my question too when Zack informed me of his intention. If my brother didn’t want his powers, then I was happy to take them on. But when I’d said that last night he had shown only irritation, and then he’d stormed out of my bedroom. Though not before pausing in the doorway to drop another bombshell.

“Things are about to change,” he’d said.

“Well, duh,” I’d snapped.

“I’m not just talking about the superpowers,” he’d said. “Other stuff too. Big stuff.”

What could possibly be bigger than giving up being Star Lad?

“Listen to me,” Zack had said. “As much as you want it to, the world can’t stay the same forever.”

He was speaking in riddles. “Is this about another invasion? Is Earth about to fall off its axis? What did Zorbon tell you?”

For a moment I’d thought he was about to say more, but he stopped himself. His expression softened and he fixed me with a kindly smile.

“G’night, Luke.”

The door clicked as he closed it behind him.

I was no clearer about his puzzling words the following day, as Serge and I filed into the gym alongside the rest of our year group for a special assembly. We sat cross-legged on the floor while teachers patrolled the lines, watching beadily and calling for silence whenever it was broken.

“Is Zack certain that Zorbon can remove his powers?” Serge pondered.

“He bestowed them in the first place,” I said. In comics, superpowers were always “bestowed” not simply “given”.

“Oui, but it is not like receiving a gift of, for example…” Serge hummed as he contemplated the most fitting comparison. “A pineapple. You cannot simply say: please now remove my pineapple.”

Serge was right – Zack’s powers weren’t like a pineapple. They were as much a part of him now as his love for algebra and dislike of comics. Leaving aside the finer points of superpower removal, there was still time before Zorbon arrived at the weekend for me to do something. Between now and then I had to persuade Zack to change his mind.

“I’m calling an emergency S.C.A.R.F. meeting,” I whispered. S.C.A.R.F. was the Superhero Covert Alliance Reaction Force, an organisation set up by Serge and me to work alongside Star Lad and Dark Flutter. This might very well be its most important mission yet. “Today, after school, in the tree house. Zack will listen to all of us if we put on a united front.”

Serge glanced along the line of seated classmates. I followed his gaze to a girl with short dark hair and a lightly freckled face. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap and her bright, intelligent eyes peered straight ahead at the stage. She was Lara Lee – friend, neighbour and Dark Flutter.

“I am not sure how united we will be,” Serge said quietly.

I understood what he meant. During our latest adventure, on a fateful minibreak to Great Minds Leisure Park, we had encountered an evil brain-in-a-jar with incredible mind powers. There had been a lot of body-swap shenanigans, in the course of which Serge and Lara had briefly occupied one another’s bodies. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but they were boyfriend and girlfriend at the time. Their relationship hadn’t survived the switcheroo, and now things between them were awkward, to say the least.

“C’mon, Serge, pull yourself together. This is more important than all that lovey-dovey stuff, this is about something deep and meaningful.” I laid a hand on his shoulder and fixed him in the eye. “Superheroes.”

He offered me a faltering smile and then looked down at the floor with a sigh.

Our headteacher, Mr Hines, took to the stage and clapped for our attention. Lingering conversations dwindled into silence. Standing beside Mr Hines was a man I didn’t recognise. He had thick dark hair with a white streak down the middle of his head, as if he was wearing a badger. He was dressed in a stripy shirt and jeans and slung over one shoulder was a canvas bag with the words “Books Are My Bag” on the front. Even from where I was sitting near the back of the hall I could tell that he was sweating.

“Who’s this guy?” I asked Serge.

“You do not know?” He sounded surprised. “The posters have been up all over school for some time. Did you not receive the letter to take home to your parents? And the two subsequent reminder letters?”

Now that he mentioned it I vaguely remembered tucking a series of correspondence from the school office in my bag. I was fairly confident the letters were still in there, possibly next to a month-old banana.

“He is Arthur Veezat,” said Serge, lowering his voice so as not to attract the attention of a nearby teacher.

“Is he French then?”

“Hmm?” Serge gave me a strange look. “Non, I said that he is our author visit.”

Now I understood. The school occasionally drafted in children’s authors in an effort to inspire us with their stirring personal stories of how they came to write a book none of us had ever heard of. Mr Hines introduced him and I listened for about five minutes as the author jumped about the stage, gesticulating wildly and shouting out words like “plot”, “character” and “royalties”. But I was too busy thinking about Zack and our important S.C.A.R.F. business to take in much of what he was saying. After a while he calmed down and read a chapter from his book. I felt myself lulled to sleep as his monotonous voice drifted over the hall.

When the reading was finally over Serge turned to me and said, “Our adventures are far more interesting than his. Per’aps we should write them down also.”

He was forgetting one thing. “But then everyone who reads them would discover Star Lad and Dark Flutter’s true identities.” I still cared about that stuff, even if Zack was ready to throw it all away.

“We could change the names. Instead of Luke and Serge, we will be Lionel and Steve. And instead of Star Lad and Dark Flutter…” He frowned in silence. Superhero names were tricky, all the good ones having been taken. “I will get back to you on that.”

In fact, recording our adventures was something that had occurred to me some time ago. A lot had happened since Zorbon’s first visit to the tree house and I would hate to forget a single detail, so I had been writing down our missions in a series of superhero-themed notebooks that Serge had given me for my last birthday. I’d already covered our first adventure with the Nemesis asteroid, the invasion by alien gym teachers, Gordon the World-Eater, and my trip to a parallel Earth to confront my Evil Twin. One day I would be as ancient and forgetful as my dad, so it would be nice to have a record.

The author didn’t exactly finish his presentation with a bang. It sort of just fizzled out and then the teachers realised it was over and we clapped a bit and the assembly came to an end. As the classes filed out in their usual disorderly fashion, the author took a seat at a table piled high with his books. He uncapped a pen and watched the departing children with an expression of sad resignation. The hall emptied until there was just me and a handful of others, including Serge and Lara. We trickled over to his table, forming a short queue, and a minute and a half later I was at the front, face-to-face with Arthur Veezat, or whatever his name was.

His features creased into a question. “Have we met before?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You look familiar. Maybe when I visited your school last year?”

I shook my head. “You’re the first author I’ve ever met.”

“That’s not true,” Lara interjected. “You’ve met my aunt Farah.”

“I thought she was a dentist.”

“She’s an author-dontist. She says there’s no money in books, so she fixes people’s teeth for cash and writes stories for fun.”

I could see a confused expression appear on Arthur’s face. Lara had that effect on people. But there was no point arguing with her. He plucked one of his books from the top of a pile, opened it and hovered his pen above the page.

“So what’s your name, young man?” he enquired.

“Luke,” I said.

He beamed up at me. “That’s my son’s name too.” He began to write it in the book. “To Luke,” he said as he scribbled.

Standing in front of a real author, even one as lame as Arthur, got me thinking about my own writing. Maybe Arthur could offer me some tips.

“I’m writing a book,” I said. “Any advice?”

“You mean apart from all that insightful writing advice I imparted during my fun-filled presentation?”

“Exactly.” I leaned in. “I want the good stuff. The under-the-counter advice. The secret to writing.”

“I don’t think there’s a secret, but one thing I would say – know how it ends.” He gestured to the stack of books. “This is the last in my series. I knew how it would end way back when I began the first one.” He paused. “I wrote them for my children. For my Luke, and my little girl, Lara.”

“That’s my name,” said Lara delightedly, and then she caught Serge’s eye and they scowled at each other.

“My kids are grown up now,” Arthur said with a deep sigh, “so it’s time to bring these stories to a conclusion.” He laid a hand on the cover and a glazed expression came over his face. Not glazed like a doughnut – the other kind where you stare unfixed into the distance. Either he’d forgotten what he was about to say again, or he was lost in thought.

Serge cleared his throat. “Do you per’aps have a third child whose name is Serge?”

Arthur laughed. “Sorry, Serge.” He slid the book he’d been writing in across the table to me. “Six ninety-nine.”

“Excuse me?”

“For the book.” He tapped the price, which was clearly labelled on the back cover.

“Why would I want a book?”

He looked baffled. “You’re in the signing queue.”

Serge stepped in front of me, unzipping a small leather wallet and producing a wad of notes from inside. “Please forgive my friend. I should like to purchase your complete oeuvre.” He handed over the cash and we waited while Arthur happily signed each of the five books in the series.

“Here,” Arthur said, pushing the same book into my hands. “It’s already signed to you – you might as well have it.”

I hesitated, staring suspiciously at it. “Does the main character’s dad have a silver filigree pocket-watch that’s been handed down through the generations?”

Arthur looked puzzled. “Is that important?”

I nodded. “It’s a sure sign that the dad’s going to die. And I can’t be doing with any of that.”

“Just take the book, Luke,” he said through gritted teeth.

After that, Lara bought the latest one, saying they were her favourites, which I knew was a lie because I’d seen her bookshelves and they’re full of miserable novels about growing up, which, to give him credit, Arthur’s were not. We thanked him and headed out. I could feel his eyes on us as we crossed the gym, and when we reached the door he called out.

“Goodbye, Luke, Lara and Serge. It was lovely meeting you all. And remember, we are all the heroes of our own stories.”

He smiled at us and we waved back.

“He’s a bit strange,” I muttered to the others. “Probably all that time spent alone in a room talking to imaginary people.”

We left the gym and made our way along the corridor to our next class. Know the ending, Arthur had advised. Useless. I was writing down real life, so there was no way of knowing. But at that moment, not in my wildest imagination, could I have pictured how my own story would end.

3

THE DEPUTY MANAGER WHO FELL TO EARTH

It was later that same day and I was at Dad’s comic shop on the High Street, waiting for him to close up so we could go home together. I wanted to get to the tree house to prepare for the S.C.A.R.F. meeting that evening, but in the meantime I had settled myself behind the till with a Thor-themed pad and a pencil with a Mjolnir hammer rubber on the end, in order to write down more of our recent adventures. I’d already written tons, filling eight pages of narrow-lined A4. Both sides. As I put the finishing touches to the latest section I wondered what our next adventure would be, and then I got this sick feeling in my stomach as it hit me – there might not be another one if Zack gave up his superpowers. Without Star Lad, there could be no S.C.A.R.F. (As much as Dark Flutter was a superhero, Star Lad was the heart of the team.) Couldn’t Zack see how selfish he was being? I didn’t want our adventures to end. Once again I bitterly reflected that I would have made a much more committed superhero than my brother. And for the trillionth time I asked myself why hadn’t Zorbon decided on me, not Zack? Yes, I’d had to nip out of the tree house for a wee and so missed his arrival, but surely the all-knowing alien could’ve timed his visit a bit better. Of all the decisions Zorbon the Decider had made, I’d never understand that one.

My thoughts were interrupted as the shop window began to rattle and from outside came the distinctive whir of rotor-blades. It sounded as if a helicopter was landing in the High Street. Dad hurried out and I followed him to find, to my astonishment, not a helicopter, but a drone hovering above the pavement. With a black metal body two metres wide and six spindly legs it looked like a giant mechanical flying insect. Slung beneath it in a harness was a cardboard box. The drone and the box sported the same logo: an illustration of a space rocket belching flames underlined with the name “Rocketship.com”. As I watched in amazement, a red light beamed from the drone, illuminating Dad, slowly moving down from the top of his head, following the contours of his face.

“Customer identification in progress,” the drone droned.

The light blinked off. Dad’s identity confirmed, the drone lowered the box into his hands.

“Congratulations. Your order has been Rocket-shipped,” declared the drone and, having delivered the package, its rotor-blades spun faster, lifting it into the sky and it buzzed off along the street, back to wherever it had come from.

I wasn’t sure what I’d just witnessed. “Did you just get a delivery from a hundred years in the future?”

Dad rolled his eyes. “Rocketship.com are trialling drone deliveries in Bromley.” He grinned. “I’m an early adopter.”

Dad wasn’t a superhero, but like Superman he had his kryptonite. In his case it was an online shopping site called Rocketship.com. I trailed behind him as he carried the box inside.

“They’ve just opened an autonomous warehouse on the edge of town,” he went on excitedly. “One hour local delivery, and your order is free if you suffer any rotor-blade-related injury.” He set the box down on the counter.

“What does autonomous mean?” I asked.

“In this case it means all the orders and deliveries are dealt with by computers and robots. No humans in the way to mess things up.” He opened up the box and discarded clouds of bubble wrap around what I now saw to be—

“A toaster?”

“Ah-ha, yes,” he said, lifting it out. “But not just any toaster.”

It was a chrome-plated, four-slice toaster – seemed like any toaster to me. The only slightly unusual things about it were two red dials on the casing and an oblong digital display beneath them which, if you squinted, gave the impression of eyes and a mouth. Dad uncoiled the flex and plugged it in to the nearest socket.

He cleared his throat and said in a deliberate voice, “OK, toaster.”

Just when I was thinking that he’d lost his mind, the red dials pulsed and a wavy line flickered across the display.

“Hello, Nigel,” said an expressionless male voice that sounded as if it had just woken from a nap. “Time for a delicious slice of toast?”

“See!” said Dad, clearly impressed by his new purchase.

“But your name’s not Nigel.”

“That’s hardly the point, Luke.” He snatched up the instruction booklet, muttering. “And I’m sure it’s simple enough to change.” He gazed lovingly at his new toy. “It’s part of a new range of domestic appliances. The toaster is the hub. With it I can control every device in our home.”

Thanks to Dad’s Rocketship.com spending spree, our house had become the Home of the Future. You couldn’t go to the toilet without first having to ask some machine to lift the lid for you. Thankfully, his obsession hadn’t yet spilled over to the shop. Mostly because he was too busy dealing with real flesh-and-blood customers to have time to install talking toilets. Dad put aside the toaster as a gaggle of excited customers entered. Our shop, “Parker & Sons”, had become super-popular ever since my Evil Twin (and anguished supervillain), Stellar, had proclaimed it the only place to buy your comics in this universe. The public were suckers for a celebrity endorsement. As a result, business was sonic-booming. One outcome of all this success was that it enabled Dad to waste money on Rocketship.com. The other consequence was that he had taken on weekend staff and a deputy manager.

This is where it got a bit weird.

“Chris,” Dad called across the shop. “Can you check in the back for another Infinity Gauntlet?” Dad held up the large gem-studded golden glove that one of the newly arrived customers wanted to buy. “Gems on this one won’t light up.”

“Will do, boss,” came the answer from behind a bookshelf. A second later there was a noise like a body being dragged across the floor, and then a figure sloped into view. At the till the customers spotted him and recoiled in fright. It was the usual response, one I’d witnessed a lot.

The figure wore a black, floor-length cape with a cowl that cast a shadow across his features. But even half concealed, he was a scary sight. He was a cyborg – part man, part machine. The machine in question being a TV remote control. Following an explosion on an alien mothership (it’s a long story) the remote control had melded with his body so that one eye was a large silver button with “OK” in its centre, his left cheek was a numbered keypad, and in place of his right hand was an oblong black plastic case with a single red power button. He ignored the customers’ terrified faces and hauled himself past them to the back of the shop.

The cyborg’s name was Christopher Talbot. And he and I had history. Not the heal-the-world-invention-of-penicillin kind of history, more the sneak-attack-missile-crisis variety. Talbot had once been a regular comic-book-store owner, but then he’d used all his savings to build a superpower-sucking machine, with which he’d attempted to take Zack’s powers for himself. That ended badly for him. Sometime later he’d redeemed himself for his dastardly ambitions by helping to thwart an alien invasion. We thought that he had sacrificed himself in the process, but it turned out he had survived. Though not without significant personal cost.

I watched him shamble towards the stock room, dragging his injured leg. This used to be his shop, so when he’d reappeared on the scene clutching the application for the position of deputy manager, my dad had felt sorry for him and offered him the job. To my surprise, Talbot had taken it and in the short time since then – even more surprisingly – he hadn’t attempted to take over the world. I was suspicious from the start.

“Look at it from my point of view,” I said as Talbot filled a jar next to the till with superhero badges. It was early one Saturday morning and he and I had been left alone at the till while Dad was in the stock room. “You disappear into thin air aboard an alien spaceship, which you claim explodes shortly after, and in the blast you become fused together with a TV remote. Next thing I know you’re back here looking like a cross between Darth Vader and Deathlok.”

His OK-button eye blinked. “During the destruction of the mothership my body merged with several TV remote controls.” His voice, like his appearance, had altered since our previous encounter. It had acquired a rasp, as if his tongue was made of metal. “The remotes saved my life. I believe they put me into a sort of stasis – stand-by, if you like – reducing my body’s need for oxygen, allowing me to survive in the vacuum of space. I have no idea for how long I floated. But eventually I was picked up by a Cerebran spaceship.”

The evil brain-in-a-jar we’d encountered at Great Minds Leisure Park was a Cerebran.

“They nursed me back to health and sent me as their emissary to Earth. That, of course, is when you and I were reunited.” He held a Black Lightning badge between the fingers of his human hand, before dropping it into the jar. It clinked against the others.

His story made sense chronologically, but it’s fair to say that I didn’t trust his version of events. True, the first thing he had done on his return was to deliver the antidote that enabled Serge and Lara to return to their own bodies, but Talbot had form as a supervillain, and – thanks to a run-in with a giant asteroid – he possessed an electric-eel-like power that allowed him to fire a blast of energy from his fingertips. It was quite cool, although it required a lengthy charging period between uses. I was also spooked by his outfit. I knew I shouldn’t be, but the black cowl and cyborg eye weren’t doing much to inspire gooey feelings of friendship. I was unwilling to let him off the hook so easily.

“And the remote controls that became part of your body,” I had quizzed him. “You sure they don’t give you some new special power?”

He had raised the plastic oblong casing with the on/off button that replaced his right hand. “Only if you call never having to hunt for the TV remote a superpower.”

That conversation had been several months ago. Since then, to his credit, Talbot had slipped effortlessly into the role of deputy manager. He was the one who’d suggested turning the basement into “The Fortress of Snackitude”. It was a café, open from early in the morning until closing time. There was a range of breakfast items, including Iron Bran and the Incredible Milk; lunch consisted of a choice between a healthy option Souperman Special with a half-Scarletwich, or a Slider-Man burger and a side of Hawk-fries. (He had quietly dropped the third option, the Human Borscht, following a lack of demand.) Talbot had also revamped the shop website, streamlined the computer ordering system, upgraded the antivirus software to a subscription service. In every way he had proved himself an asset to the shop, and Dad only refrained from referring to him as his “right-hand man” out of sensitivity to his condition. Dad had no clue about Talbot’s dark past. As far as he was concerned, his employee’s odd appearance was the result of an industrial accident and a fondness for supervillain cosplay, neither of which was a barrier in his current choice of career. Part of me wanted to warn my dad, but another part wanted to give Talbot a chance. I decided to hold off saying anything until the moment he gave me cause for concern.

Dad nudged me. “Go to the stock room and help Chris look for that gauntlet, will you?”

“Do I have to?”

Dad winced. “He doesn’t see so well with the, y’know, OK-button eye.”

“Fine,” I sighed, and slouched off.

Shadows seesawed across the floor of the stock room, cast by a solitary lightbulb swinging from a short flex. I figured Talbot must have knocked the bulb when he entered, and in the disorientating light I struggled to see him.

Dad had gone a bit nuts buying stuff for the shop, so the place was packed with boxes, stacked to the ceiling. This was also where he hid some of his less successful Rocketship.com purchases from Mum. Notable items included a smart hairbrush that told you when to get a haircut; vacuum-cleaner roller-skates; and a washer-dryer combo that promised to clean everything in half the time, but which didn’t mention that it also shrank everything to half its size. Mum had made Dad promise to return all of these purchases, but so far he’d not quite got round to doing so. I had a feeling that the talking toaster would soon find a home here alongside the rest of the half-baked devices.

I finally discovered Talbot hunched over an open carton, rummaging through its contents. He had his back to me, but as I approached he straightened, as if sensing my presence.

“Luke,” he said, spinning round, clutching a boxfresh Infinity Gauntlet. “How was school today?”

I knew he was trying to be friendly, but it was like having a Dalek ask if I’d care for a Tic Tac.

“Fine,” I replied. “We had an author visit.”

“How interesting,” he mused. “I’ve always believed that books can change your life. You just need to find the right one.”

He glanced at a shrink-wrapped pile of books on the floor. The shop stocked a wide selection of graphic novels, and movie and TV tie-in novels, but the superhero on the cover of this one was not a character I recognised.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“The right book,” said Talbot, slipping the Infinity Gauntlet over his TV remote hand and using one finger to slice open the film. “I predict that this is about to become our biggest-selling item.” With his other hand he plucked off the top copy and held it out to me.