CHAPTER 3

Dear Earthling,

Thanks for your letter, but I must admit I’m a bit confused. You have cats as pets on Earth? One of the planets in our galaxy is called Tiddles, and is entirely populated by cats. Many of them have even settled on Crank—in fact my neighbour, Miss Suki, is a cat. She owns a kitten toyshop in town that sells things like clockwork mice and balls with bells in them. I showed her the picture you sent of your pet cat Mr. Leo licking his bottom. She covered her eyes and said, “Washing in public? Has he no shame?!”

Talking of toys, I recently saved up enough pocket money to buy the latest Z-box game. It’s called Mortal Wombat and is totally blamtastic!

I asked Andi round so we could spend the weekend having a Mortal Wombat marathon, but we’d only been playing 3.37 hours when Dad said our eyes would turn square and forced us out of the house to get some fresh air. I pointed out that Andi’s eyes are square anyway, but Dad just said, “See?” like that was all the proof he needed.

We went to the park for a while, but to be honest I think fresh air is slightly overrated, and Andi—being a robot—doesn’t even breathe.

After a while we got bored and decided to try and sneak back in to continue gaming, but guess who we caught in the lounge playing Mortal Wombat? Dad at least had the decency to look embarrassed and admit it’s a totally addictive game.

We decided to play tournaments together, but just then Mum and Shriekfest came back from the shops. Shriekfest took one look at us having fun without her and decided to have a thermonuclear meltdown because her stupid baby show was about to come on the telly box. Her “piercing wail” tactic worked as it always does, and the three of us were forced out of the room.

Dad had kind of bonded with us though (such is the power of the Wombat) and asked if we wanted to come and hang out in his lab for a while. I leapt at the chance—I love Dad’s laboratory—but Andi needed persuading. He’s probably still nervous, as last time we went up there Dad upgraded Andi’s memory chip, and for a while he was convinced that he’d been raised in the forest by a pack of wild gnomes.

Dad showed us an invention he’s working on—a powder you put into your sloshing machine, which automatically sorts out socks into pairs. I think it was Mum’s idea as she’s always complaining that the sock monster keeps eating random socks and leaving odd ones.

I said that if it was successful I’d talk to Sergeant Megatron 5000 about buying some powder for the Space Cadets’ laundry when we go to Space Camp. Andi pointed out everyone would be wearing the same socks since they’re part of the uniform. Sometimes Andi can be really annoying!

Do you have an annoying best friend? Let me know in your next letter.

Your friend,

Dethbert Jones.