Dr. Leafhead: Story of a Mad Scientist, Part 2

What Happened to Me During the Siege

     As soon as we entered the house I made my way for the the LabCentre.  Leafhead and the army went off in the opposite direction.  It was just me and a laser-gun.  The house was quiet.  It seemed like nobody was around.  I kept my guard up anyway. 

     The familiar green door loomed ahead.  I remembered to first ring the doorbell 7 times and take a bite of the cinnamon raisin bagel.  The door opened up instead of sending a jet of napalm toward my face.  In the next room was my space-suit.  Beside it was the wristwatch Leafhead had given me on my first day at the house.

     "I wondered where you were," I said aloud to the wristwatch as I scooped it up.  This would be handy for knowing how long I've been on Mars.  

     I quickly put on the space-suit and moved through the final airlock and onto a completely different planet.  I expected the usual solitude I'd come to expect when visiting Mars.  I was in for a completely different experience.

     The lake was still there, lined with the ruins of a martian metropolis.  Leafhead's garden of alien herbs and vegetables had mysteriously flourished in our absence.  Wild plants sprouted up everywhere.    

      Might as well make use of my time here.  

     I gathered the edible looking vegetables but then realized I wouldn't be able to take my helmet off and actually eat them.  I threw them on the ground.  

     Maybe I'll grab them on the way out, I thought. 

     I explored some nearby ruins.  They were very familiar to me.  I even found some old notebooks I'd lost here.  I flipped through the books.  Much of it had to do with my feeble attempt to decipher the ancient alien hieroglyphs that could be seen all over the place.

     Just as I started having a quiet time getting lost in Mars and forgetting about Leafhead and the army... a series of bright flashes moved across the sky.  Nothing interestingly cosmic had ever happened in all my time spent here.  These streaks of light came to a halt and revealed themselves to be a convoy of space-ships.  Very impressive looking space-ships, I assumed.  Not that I had anything to base that opinion on.  One of the ships flew a little lower to the surface of the planet.  Two figures leaped the short distance to the reddish sand below.  They ran towards me.

     These figures were definitely alien.  One of them looked terrible.  Horrible, actually.  I'll never forget how scared I was for a second as this monstrous figure lumbered toward me.  It was a greenish thing with a bizarre adornment of limbs that made no sense at all.  The other one looked less terrifying but still very alien.  It was a short creature with blue skin.  I thought it was funny that the blue one appeared to be wearing a pair of goggles and a white lab coat the exact type Leafhead wears.  

     Are these friends of Leafhead?  I wondered.  Interstellar connections? 

     "I don't think that's him!" shouted the green one to the blue one.

     "You don't know that," replied the blue one.

     "I bet you.  That's not him."

     "I'm not going to bet you!" replied the blue one.  "You haven't got anything left to bet anyway!"

     "That's not true.  I've got real estate on Ploroxis IV."

     "That planet isn't worth a damn and you know it!  It's populated by pirates."

     By this point the two creatures had walked right up to me.  They apparently didn't notice or didn't care.  They continued arguing.

     "So, what? You're not going to bet me?" asked the green one.

     "No, I don't think so."

     "Come on, I bet you all of my real estate on Ploroxis IV that this man is NOT Dr. Leafhead!"

     "Hang on!" I interjected, finally.  "You two DO know Dr. Leafhead?!"

     "See, it's not him," said the green creature smugly.  "Told you so.  Hah."

     He stepped forward to shake my hand.

     "Dr. Rip T. Brash the Third, at your service," he said.  "I'm not really at your service, though.  Not sure why I just said that.  I don't have any time to help you at all.  So don't ask me for any favors... got it?!"

     "I'm Wilx the Astrospeciologist," said the blue creature before Rip had a chance to get too worked up over the prospect of doing someone a favor.  "We have an urgent mission.  But we were hoping it would be Dr. Leafhead here on Mars right now.  Our life sensors detected someone was here but we didn't know who it was."

     "Wait...I've heard those names before," I said as I thought for a second. "That's right! You're the two aliens who made Leafhead immortal! Aren't you? You met him here on Mars a long time ago."

  "Your idea of a long time is hilarious," said Rip.

    "Yes we have met Dr. Leafhead once before," replied Wilx.  "We trust him to hold onto a powerful invention that needs to be temporarily hidden."

     "Why didn't you just drop it off with him on Earth?" I asked.

     "Earth," muttered Rip.  "Long after your time it will become the Planetglomerate... and then there are Greegs and Quiggs and Groobins and--"

     "Nevermind all that," interrupted Wilx.  "As if we've got time to get him caught up on the entire evolutionary history of the Planetglomerate and Greegs and Garbotron and every other crazy thing going on in the multi-verse!"

     "True," said Rip.  "I didn't say Garbotron though.  I said Groobins--"

     "It doesn't matter!" said Wilx.  "Groobins would take even longer to explain than Garbotron."

     "Go on then," said Rip as he sat down on what appeared to be a boulder but was in fact a boulder-shaped pile of condensed sand.  A plume of martian dirt went in the air as Rip crashed to the ground.

     "Ouch," he said.  "Get me off this dead planet."

     "We need Leafhead to hold onto this lab-coat for us," said Wilx.

     Wilx produced another lab-coat from within the pocket of the lab-coat he was wearing.

     "How did you do that?" I asked.  There had clearly been nothing in the pocket. 

     "My lab-coat's pockets are a gateway into an entire other dimension," said Wilx as if it was a normal thing to say as casually as possible.  "This lab-coat I'm giving you was an attempt to clone the gateway properties into another coat.  It was to be a perfect duplicate.  It almost worked, partially, but the gateway is unstable.  Everything will be fine as long as the coat pockets are NOT used.  Nothing must travel between the dimensions with this coat.  We don't want to risk the coat falling into the wrong hands."

     "Can't you destroy the coat?" I asked.

     "It's not that easy," said Wilx.  "The portal's energy must be properly disposed of.  I mean, you can't just go around throwing a jacket like this into a Grelkian tar-pit and hope for the best!  There might be an inter-dimensional quake that could cause time-splits or attract Galactic Gobbling Groobins and Solar-System Swallowing Swatches.  Anything might happen."

     "I don't understand any of what you're saying," I mentioned.  "But it's all interesting and scary."

     "We have that effect on people," said Rip.

     "Just keep the coat hidden and we'll come back for it when we've figured out how to destroy it," said Wilx.  "It's very simple."

     "You see," said Rip reassuringly.  "Even a simpleton could do this task!  Nothing to stress about.  Now give him the coat and let's get out of here!"

     Wilx threw the coat over.  He and Rip then walked over to their bizarre spaceship and left Mars.

     I took a nap near some of the ruins.  Napping on Mars is never recommended.