At RECEPTION there were only two things. An enormously wide, high reception desk and behind the desk a grumpy-receptionist wearing a telephone headset. Her face looked like an old crumpled bit of paper that someone had drawn a really grumpy face on. Someone who couldn’t draw very well and was angry about not being able to draw well.
Ask her to confirm our coordinates,’ said Hils.
That’s how an army person says, Ask the grumpy-receptionist where we are.’
‘No. You do it.’
‘Negative.’
Suddenly I realised there was something amazing and scary about the grumpy-receptionist. Amazingly amazing and amazingly scary.
‘Hils,’ I said.
‘Just go up to the desk and ask her,’ said Hils.
‘Hils, I don’t think that grumpy-receptionist is sitting at a desk.’
‘Of course she is sitting at a desk,’ said Hils.
‘Have a closer look,’ I said.
Hils had a closer look.
Hils’s mouth fell open. Her mouth fell so wide open that it was like a castle letting down its drawbridge. I almost expected some knights on horseback to come riding out.
But the only thing that rode out of Hils’s mouth was the word ‘Wow!’
Hils never said ‘Wow!’
The grumpy-receptionist wasn’t sitting at a huge desk.
There was no huge desk.
There was just a huge grumpy-receptionist.
She was the hugest person I had ever seen.
She was probably the hugest person ever.
AND SHE WAS WALKING TOWARDS US.
My brain was still trying to do thinking about seeing the world’s hugest grumpy-receptionist and now it also had to do more thinking about how the world’s hugest grumpy-receptionist was walking towards us.
My brain did not want to do all that thinking.
She was walking towards us much faster than I’d imagined the world’s hugest grumpy-receptionist could walk towards us.
‘Visitors,’ she shouted as she kept on walking towards us.
When she shouted the whole building shook. Actually, we weren’t in a building we were underground. She was making underground shake.
‘Visitors.’
She was like a talking earthquake.
‘We come in peace,’ I said.
‘The nearest exit is 15.7 metres in a south-easterly direction,’ said Hils.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said.
‘Visitors.’
She was getting closer.
‘It means turn around and run. Really fast. NOW.’
‘Visitors.’
My ears got cramp. Again.
‘I don’t want to die,’ I said as I turned around and ran really fast while I grabbed my earlobes and started flapping them about.