Sven, the Planet Royale butler, backed away from Rufus, who was prancing and baring his teeth in a threatening fashion. Dexter tried to get Rufus to calm down, but the chimp didn’t like it when servants entered the room, and he was ready to defend Dexter with his life.
“Oh my,” Sven said. “Nice monkey… nice monkey… Mr. Goldstein, there’s been an incident in the kitchen. We were hoping you could—”
“An incident?” Dexter jumped up. “I’m coming.”
Dexter told Rufus to stay put, but Rufus immediately grabbed him by the leg and made it clear that Dexter wasn’t going anywhere without him. Dexter finally extricated himself from Rufus and managed to convince him to stay. He ran with Sven down the hall and across a courtyard, into a giant kitchen. The monkeys were nowhere to be found, but the entire kitchen was in shambles. There were eggs smashed on the walls, canisters of flour and sugar broken on the floor, dented pots, and banana peels everywhere. The monkeys had destroyed nearly everything.
Dexter found the chef slumped on the floor, his face in his hands. He looked up at Dexter and tears were streaming down his face.
“Chef!” Dexter said, “I’m so sorry, I…”
“This is the greatest day of my life! The greatest!” the chef cried. He let out a great sniffle and looked at Dexter through gushing tears. He grabbed Dexter’s shirt, leaned in, and whispered, “I’ve never had such an enthusiastic response to my bananas Foster recipe. Never.”
“Oh,” Dexter said, “so… you’re not mad?”
The chef looked around at the kitchen and smiled weakly. “I don’t know if I shall be this happy ever again.”
“Dexter?”
Dexter turned and saw the king of the universe standing in the doorway, his white beard standing out against his gold robes. He was holding Boris’s hand, and the grizzled old chimp looked very pleased with himself.
Dexter’s heart thumped in his chest as he followed Boris and the king into the gardens outside of the palace. He saw Mortimer the pink dolphin fly into the air and say, “Hello!”
Dexter hastily shouted, “Hi!” back, knowing Mortimer would continue shouting greetings for hours until he received a response. Mortimer soared into the air and did a belly flop.
“Hey, you!” someone shouted from behind him. Dexter looked up and saw a construction crew sitting on the edge of the roof of the palace, dangling their feet over the side as they ate lunch. The man who shouted held up a large metal lunchbox. “I’m a manly man. That’s why I’m yelling at you. I just thought you should know. Are you a manly man?”
Dexter covered his eyes from the sun’s glare and said, “No. Not really.”
He turned back to follow the king, and the construction worker shouted, “That’s right! Keep walking! I knew you were scared!” Dexter shook his head as the construction workers started chanting, “Man-ly men!! Man-ly men!!”
Dexter caught up with the king, who was showing Boris a tree with very smooth bark. Boris slapped the tree and leaned up to see if anything would happen, then quickly scrambled up into the branches. He plucked an acorn from a branch and threw it at Dexter, chirping happily.
“What are the construction workers doing?”
The king turned back to look at the palace as if he was curious to see it still standing there. “It will not be a palace much longer. It will be the seat of the government, and we have to be ready for the new president and representatives to move in.”
“But…” Dexter started, but the king had turned his back. He walked along the path through the gardens and stopped at a fountain in the shape of an old spaceship. Dexter followed behind him. He wondered why the king was stepping down. He summoned his courage and asked, “What’s going to happen to you?”
The king stared down at Dexter for a moment. Dexter made eye contact with him for a brief, terrifying second before he found a pebble on the ground to look at instead.
“What is the one thing you wish you could change about yourself?” the king asked.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Dexter thought about the time when Jacob and Sarah had called Maria Garcia and handed him the phone. They had already checked ahead of time to make sure she would say yes if Dexter asked her to go to the movies, and even though he knew that she would agree, he still couldn’t bring himself to say a single word. He hung up in a panic. Sarah screamed bloody murder, Jacob shook his head with a sad grin, and Dexter had made up an excuse about his mom wanting him to sort the recycling and ran home. Dexter wondered if there was a girl somewhere out in the world who would be willing to communicate solely through letters, because he was pretty sure she would be his soul mate.
“I wish I were brave,” Dexter said.
The king continued to stare at Dexter and did not betray a hint of feeling. “If I were to give you a potion that would make you the bravest person in the universe, would you take it?”
Dexter recoiled. “You have that?!”
“No.” The king smiled. “I don’t.”
“Oh. Because that would…” Dexter trailed off. He thought about suddenly being filled with Jacob Wonderbar–level bravery and finally being able to talk to Maria and getting through the day without being terrified that his mom would make him move his aquarium out of his room in punishment for getting detention. Courage would certainly solve a great number of his problems. But then he also imagined himself getting into trouble all the time and possibly jumping into a fire or performing stunts that would result in disfiguring injuries because he would be too brave to be a highly sensible individual who knew better than to throw himself into certain danger. “I guess I probably wouldn’t take it.”
The king responded by pressing a piece of green plastic into Dexter’s hands.
“What’s this?” Dexter asked.
“It’s an Astral Telly. You can use it to call anyone in the universe. I think it’s time you rejoined your friends.”
“Wow.” Dexter turned the Telly around in his hands. He had so much to tell Jacob and Sarah about Patrick and the crazy Valkyrians blowing everything up and about how they thought they were kidnapping Jacob Wonderbar and how he called Dexter a dirty Earther and said the king was the only person protecting Earth.
The king turned and started walking away, and Dexter steeled his nerves for one last question. He shouted, “Why did you nominate Jacob for president?”
The king said over his shoulder, “No Astral was brave enough to run against Mick because of his tricks.” He paused and turned back to gaze at Dexter directly. “But mainly because the survival of Planet Earth depends on it.”
Dexter felt a shiver down his spine to hear his worst fears about Patrick and the Valkyrians confirmed. He had to warn Jacob to make sure he knew how important it was to win the election. It was a matter of planetary life and death.
Dexter heard a screech. He turned back to the palace and saw Rufus scramble over a balcony and bound toward him. He turned away and braced himself as Rufus launched himself into the air and plowed Dexter into the ground.
“I wasn’t going to leave without you!” he said as the chimp buried his face in Dexter’s back.