Chapter 6

Wow. What a first day. And to think—yesterday morning I woke up in my own bed, in my own house, in my own solar system. You’re probably wondering how I actually got here, to this hunk of metal floating around in deep space. And I should probably tell you about it while it’s all still fresh in my mind. Who knows what’ll happen when my Mighty Mega Supergeniusness kicks in. It might even scramble my memories a bit, and I want to make sure you get the whole, true story.

So, there we were, hurtling through space in our transport shuttle.

We had another passenger in the back, sort of a frail old guy. I had no idea who he was.

But I did have an idea of just how far we had to travel to get to the space station—56,000 light-years! Do you have any idea how far that is? Me either. At least, I didn’t before I asked my dad.

“Well, son, a light-year is the distance that light can travel in one year.”

“And how far is that, Dad?”

“Oh, about 5.878 trillion miles, depending on how many times it has to stop to go to the bathroom. HAR!”

That “HAR” is the sound of my dad laughing. He makes it every time he tells a joke. It’s usually the only way we even know he made a joke. For a supergenius, my dad can be a real goofball.

So, a few hundred thousand trillion miles to go? I figured that was going to take a few hundred trillion years, so I was pretty sure I’d be the oldest seventh grader at Sciriustrati Fibronoculareus Junior High when I finally got there. Maybe there was a shortcut?

“Uh, Dad?” I asked. “How much longer till we get there?”

“Well, we still have about forty-five minutes before we reach the wormhole on the back side of the moon. After that I’d say twenty-seven seconds and we’ll be at the far side of the galaxy. Twenty-nine if we run into traffic. HAR!”

Another joke. But a shortcut, too!

“Wormhole?” I asked.

“That’s right. You do know what a wormhole is, don’t you, Kelvin?”

“Uhh… oh, a wormhole. Of course I know what that is.”

I had no idea what that was. Wormhole? Seriously? Never heard of it. But I couldn’t let my parents know that. I’d done a pretty good job of hiding the fact that my superbrilliance hadn’t risen to the surface yet. I’d hate to blow it now and disappoint them.

Besides, there were really only three things it could possibly be, right?

WORMHOLE POSSIBILITY 1—A hole that a worm made. Like in an apple. Not sure how that would help get us across the galaxy in twenty-seven seconds, though. Maybe it was a magic apple, and when you ate the part with the hole in it, you were instantly transported bazillions of miles across the galaxy. Hmm. Seemed reasonable.

WORMHOLE POSSIBILITY 2—A hole in the ground filled with worms. You held your breath, jumped in the hole, and… ZWAP! You were on the other side of the galaxy. Definitely a possibility.

WORMHOLE POSSIBILITY 3—A hole in a worm. Hey—now we were getting somewhere! It would have to be a giant worm, so the hole would be big enough to climb into. Then the worm would do a wicked-fast space crawl to the far side of the galaxy. Kind of gross, but yeah, that must be what it was. Come to think of it, my first two ideas seemed sort of ridiculous now.

“Hey, everyone,” Dad said. “We’re at the wormhole!”