Free My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord by David Solomons Page B

eye. High up one wall was a viewing window, behind which huddled shadowy figures, observing me. I felt like a specimen on a microscope slide. I sat up. My head throbbed, and I had an overwhelming desire for—
    â€œGrilled cheese, oh great and terrible Thucwex?”
    There was a faint buzzing next to my ear. I turned to find some kind of hovering drone with a bulbous electronic eye that swiveled at the end of a stalk. The weird thing was that the drone looked familiar. It held out a silver plate on which lay a slice of toast with a slab of melted white cheese.
    â€œHalloumi,” said the voice. “Not only the squeakiest cheese in the universe, but one of the saltiest. Your biology requires such replenishment after your journey.”
    Journey? What was the voice talking about? I examined the grilled cheese greedily. It might have been poisoned, but I didn’t care. I wolfed it down, and slipped off the podium. “Where am I? Who are you?” I addressed the figures behind the high window.
    â€œOne question at a time,” said the voice. “Lower the blast shields,” it commanded.
    With a rumble, a section of wall parted, leaving an unobstructed view out. I’d seen this view a hundred times, but only in photos with a NASA logo in one corner.
    Before me lay the spinning green and blue marble of planet Earth.
    â€œWe are in geostationary orbit above the oblate ellipsoid known to you as Earth,” explained the voice calmly. “In your standard measure, twenty-three thousand miles above coordinates fifty-one degrees, twenty-two minutes, thirty-nine-point-nine seconds latitude; zero degrees, two minutes, thirty-six-point-five-one seconds longitude. Or, as I am sure you have already calculated, directly above Route 95 at the corner of Brewery Road.”
    Suddenly, I remembered where I had seen the drone before. “I’m on the mother ship from
Puny Earthlings!
” I breathed.
    â€œSuch insight, such reckoning,” said the voice, impressed. “Truly he is the Thucwex Gsuphlon.”
    â€œA new season brings a new Thucwex,” chanted more voices.
    I reeled about the room in shock, legs wobbling beneath me. I stumbled and threw out a hand to steady myself. It brushed against a rope hanging from the ceiling. Curious. The jumble of thoughts in my head arranged themselves in some sort of order. The green flash from the Xbox just after I’d defeated Star Guy in the game must have been a teleportation beam. I’d been
beamed up
. And yet this place didn’t look like any transporter room I’d seen in comics or on TV. Where were the beaming bays? The control panels with dozens of sliders? I pushed the questions from my mind—I had other things to worry about. If this was the mother ship, then the shadowy figures in the viewing window were aliens. Actual extraterrestrials. And if they were anything like the ones in the video game, they didn’t come in peace.
    â€œI know you’re planning to take over the world,” I said. “But you won’t succeed.”
    â€œYes, we thought so too,” said the voice smugly. “Until you came along, oh dreadful Thucwex.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? And why do you keep calling me that? What’s a Thucwex?”
    â€œHow shall I explain?” There was a sound I can only describe as a polite cough into a clenched tentacle. “Who knows the earthlings better than themselves? Who better to plot their downfall than one of their own? That video game you are so obsessed with? The key to our plan. It was the maze and you the laboratory rats. In your language, we ‘crowdsourced’ our invasion plan.”
    The game. The game was a trick.
    The voice let out a laugh at its own cleverness, one that sounded like a mouthful of slapping tongues.
    â€œThe only obstacle to our inevitable conquest has been the one known as Star Guy,” the smug alien went on. “For some time now