I'm starting with the second chapter because i already got help with the first on another website.
Anyway the forward should clue you in on whats happening this chapter. Please give detailed critiques with quoted examples of the sections that you think need work.
FORWARD:
Upon attending the reading of his grandfather's will
Ken Cosmo was given a mysterious letter. The mystery deepened
as his mother went temporarily mad in a desperate attempt to
prevent him from reading it. When Ken opened the letter he found
a holographic message in which it was revealed that Ken's grandfather
was an alien from another planet. Ken was then entrusted with grandfather's
greatest secret, the location of the most powerful object in the universe,
The Star gauntlet...
SPACE ADVENTURE
EPISODE TWO THE STAR GUANTLET
I collected the marble from the floor and stuffed it into my pocket. Then I proceeded to go over the situation in my head. My mother was going to be an obstacle if she found out that I knew the family’s little secret. She’s a clever woman and would find some way to keep me separated from the star gauntlet. My aunt on the other hand would most certainly be trying to get her hands on it viewing it as some sort of ticket to wealth(or perhaps a way to leave her gambling husband stranded on some alien planet), either way it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to find out about it. My cousin on the other hand might actually be the only member of my family that I can trust in this situation but she’s just so bossy, nagging and whiny I couldn't’t possibly bring her along on a space adventure.
But then I remembered that she’d always made fun of me for believing in aliens. But now I had proof of not only their existence but of the fact that we are descended from one. The thought of making her take back all of the jokes and criticisms that she had made at my expense was irresistible. For that reason, (and the fact that I remembered she was the only one other than my mom with a key to my grandfather’s house) I picked up my cell phone and dialed her number.
It rang for a few minutes and when Jen finally picked it up she was not a happy camper.
“Ken what the hell is it that’s so important for you to wake me up in the middle of the night!? I swear to god if you don’t have a good reason for calling me this late I will come over to your house and kick you in the balls!”
Id felt like Id just woken up a dragon. I hesitated, then gathered my guts together and finally started to tell her. “Jen, listen to me I found the most amazing thing! Grandpa gave me this marble thing, but it wasn’t just a marble it was a message and in it there was a hologram of grandpa and it told me that he was an alien and that makes our moms half alien which makes us a quarter alien and my mom knows but doesn’t want us to know so now we need to sneak into grandpa’s house so that we can go into the trunk he left me that has all of his alien stuff in it before either my mom finds it and tries to hide it or your dad finds it and tries to sell it, and don’t act like you don’t know that that’s exactly what he would do but really we need to meet up at grandpa’s house like right now!!!!”
For about a minute there was utter silence on Jen’s end of the phone.
Then finally she opened her mouth to ask, “What the hell are you talking about?”
I slowed my speech and explained everything to her again, this time in more then one breath. “You’ve been having crazy dreams again.” she said. “No, it was real!” I told her. “Look Ken, your stressed out over grandpa dying and it’s messing with your mind.” She still didn’t believe me.
“I know what’s real!” I shouted.
“You’ve never known what’s real.” She replied.
“I have proof!” I told her.
“Where?” she asked.
“That’s what I have been trying to tell you, there is proof at grandpa’s house!”
I shouted again then realized that waking my mother would ruin everything so I quickly lowered my voice. “Meet me there Jen, I can show you what’s in grandpa’s secret chest.”
Jen sighed, “fine. I guess I can’t really leave you alone in your state of mind.”
***
We met outside of my grandfather’s house. Jen was late arriving, Id been waiting for close to an hour. “What took you so long?” I asked.
“did you expect me to come in my pajamas? A girl needs to keep up her appearances.” She replied.
She was wearing a blue evening gown and had her hair in a bun held by Chinese hair pins. I should mention that this girl tends to overdress in some way for every occasion so by then I was used to it. “Whatever, just get us in there.” I said.
Jen fished around in her small blue purse for a while then produced a key chain shaped like a panda. “Alright Ken, but if you admit it was a dream now I wont tease you about it, scouts honor.” She held up her fingers like a girl scout.
“You were never a scout.” I said. “And it wasn’t a dream.”
She turned the key and the large wooden door swung open.
Entering the dark and dusty hall I felt like I was an explorer in some ancient tomb. The strange artifacts that my grandfather collected only served to heighten the tense feeling. We crept through the dark passage the walls of which were lined with strange statues from every corner of the globe, they ranged greatly in shape and size; for instance a six foot goat headed knight stood on my left and a three foot fertility idol shaped like a monkey with a giant erection stood on my right. Though I know that she will deny this I distinctly heard my cousin giggle as we passed it.
Finally we came to the den, a huge circular room sunken about ten feet into the ground. All around the walls were bookshelves and in the center of the room there was a large reclining chair and big screen television. Somehow this room seemed to sum up my grandfather quite well, he was studious and scholarly yet at the same time extremely laid back and unserious. “Come on then Ken we haven’t got all year.” Jen pushed passed me and marched over to the far left side of the room. Between two tall bookshelves was a very narrow passage. Inside of which a steep wooden staircase shot up into the darkness. “Well Ken, what are you waiting for? Lead the way.” Jen said stepping aside, and forgetting that not one minute before she’d shoved me aside in order to take the lead.
It seemed though that looking up at the dark, steep staircase gave her vertigo, made her hesitate. I felt it too as I looked up into that dark void, more so as I crept up the steps. They were very short, I couldn’t fit my whole foot on a single one. As I climbed I hesitated feeling as though I could fall backward at any moment.
“What’s your holdup move!” Jen shouted, prodding me from behind.
I moved forward slowly and with caution, even with both hands on the railings I could not shake that vertigo, that feeling that I would inevitably fall and break my neck. I wondered how grandpa could have lived in this house for forty years and have died of a heart attack… or whatever he died of, without an autopsy we can never be quite sure what killed him. Nevertheless, my point is that he died of natural causes as opposed to slipping up while climbing this deathtrap and breaking every bone in his body.
Finally we reached the top of the staircase, three stories up both narrow and steep.
Directly above us a rope was hanging, it was attached to a pull down ladder.
My hands were shaking as I reached up, I pulled the rope and the ladder dropped down from the ceiling. Jen and I began to climb it, we entered the attic through a small and dark hole cut in the ceiling. The room itself was pitch black, totally without light.
“Jen do you know where the light is?” I asked.
“Don’t be stupid, grandpa never let me come up here.” She replied.
Choosing to ignore her insult, I began to stumble around in the dark until I hit my head on a beam. “Oh I have an LED!” Jen shouted as I crashed onto the hardwood floor. She stood over me with that dumb panda key chain in her hand, it was shining a bright blue LED. “There’s the light switch.” She said, stepping over me to get to it. The room was filled with the yellow incandescent light as I stumbled to my feet. The fist thing I noticed was how many boxes filled the room, one stacked on top of another all the way up to the ceiling. It took quite a bit of searching before my attention was grabbed by a sparkling gleam in the far corner of the room. I went to investigate and there, between two stacks of large boxes was the golden chest.
In it’s brilliance it resembled the ark of the covenant. I was immediately enthralled by the pictographs carved into the exterior of the trunk. They depicted some great and ancient city were winged people with antlers walked around in flowing robes. “Its beautiful,” Jen said. I hadn’t even noticed her standing behind me. “Do you know how to open it?” she asked. I froze, realizing that grandpa had not told me anything about how to open the thing. “Well, I cant say that I do but if it were locked grandpa would have given me a key.” I replied as attempted to lift the lid only to have it refuse to budge. Jen smirked. “It looks like you’ve fallen victim to one of grandpa’s pranks.”
I glared at her. “No, this wasn’t just some joke!” I tried to force the thing to open but it didn’t budge. “Don’t just stand there Jen find something for me to pry it open with!” She sighed shaking her head as she made a token effort to look around the attic.
I got frustrated and started to hit the blasted thing with my hand. Unexpectedly I cut myself on one of many small needles protruding from the chest. My blood dripped from my hand falling down onto the etchings of the city. I heard a noticeably loud click from within the trunk. And as you might have expected it popped open effortlessly.
“Who would think that hitting it would actually work.” Jen said. She hadn’t seen it, she didn’t realize that the key to the trunk’s lock was my blood.
The chest’s interior was lined with red velvet and sitting in it was only one thing.
An object wrapped up in a blue sheet, I knew right off, what it was and couldn’t wait to see it. I unwrapped the sheets and revealed the star gauntlet.
Like the chest that housed it the star gauntlet was made out of gleaming and sparkling gold (to be more precise an alloy similar to gold but infinitely stronger). In the center of the hand piece was a large green ruby and three smaller red ones beneath it. A large webbed fin was folded against the right side of the glove. I turned the gauntlet over, the other side was just as astounding to look at. In the palm there was a blue ruby with a red diamond in it’s center. Surrounding the ruby were three silver rings with small symbols etched in a circular pattern. The symbols were like no earthly language, they consisted of different sized spirals, triangles and circles overlapping in at least a hundred different ways. On the forearm section there were more such etchings surrounding a crystal ball.
I held the gauntlet in my left hand as I showed it to Jen. “See I was right admit it.” I said. “That’s just some old movie prop or something. Honestly Kenny you are so gullible,” she replied. I have to admit that that little statement annoyed me. I put the gauntlet on my right hand immediately and grinned. “Oh this thing is real baby and I aim to prove it.” She rolled her eyes. I looked at the gauntlet, inspecting it, trying to figure out how it might work. “There’s got to be some kind of button or something.” I said. “Your just wasting your time.” Jen remarked as she sat in the big dusty armchair in the corner. I tried to ignore her as I continued my inspection. After about five minutes of this I finally noticed something of worth. The green ruby at the center of the hand piece had a very small hole in it, a hole just the right size to put a pin into.
I fished around in my coat pocket until I found the pin from grandpa’s letter.
I held it between my thumb and my index finger as I slowly inserted it into the ruby. I halfway expected to be disappointed, I partially considered the possibility of it all having been some elaborate fantasy. However, I knew in my heart and in my mind that it would work. What I didn’t know was what was coming next.
There was a bright flash of green light and Jen shot up from her seat like jackrabbit and shouted, “Holy crap!” as a life sized image of our grandfather was projected from my arm. “Hay there Kenny I prepared this special message to play when you are wearing the star gauntlet. I bet you think that thing is the bees knees but you don’t got a clue as how to use it. But that’s why I'm here boy so sit down and shut up and you might learn something. ”
“That’s impossible!” Jen shouted as she waved her hands back and forth through the holographic image. Quite unexpectedly, grandpa turned his head in her direction.
“Excuse me Kenny but unless the machinery is mistaken I'm detecting the vocal patters of your cozen Jen. I imagine this comes as quite a shock to you cupcake but as Kenny has undoubtedly told you, I'm an alien from outer space! Now I know you aren’t the type to believe in little green men but you need to look at the evidence before you. This kind of technology just doesn’t exist on earth and you know it little Missy. ”
“Grandpa I don’t understand!” Jen shouted.
“He can’t hear you.” I explained as my grandfather turned his holographic head back to me. “Now boy it’s time for you to listen. I'm giving you the star gauntlet so that you can travel the cosmos and learn through contact with extra terrestrial worlds. I don’t want you using it to get yourself into trouble. It’s a dangerous universe out there kiddo, don’t go and get your ass blown up by acting like some science fiction space hero. There should be some kind of pincushion shaped like a fat ugly cat in the corner by your grandma’s sewing stuff. There are pins of varying color sticking out of it; you being a smart kid you’ll have guessed what they really are. They’re color coded, each color serves a different purpose. The green pins are beginner’s instructions for the basic functions of the star gauntlet. The red pins consist mostly of advanced star charts. The blue ones are more detailed specs on the gauntlet and its more advanced functions. Yellow contains the histories of numerous worlds. Black is mostly concerning military and political structures of the galaxies. Purple lists a number dangerous groups and individuals to be avoided. White is a collection of alien literature. Silver is a list of friends and allies that Ive gathered over the years. Pink is just miscellaneous information. Well I guess that’s everything, save this pin though there are a few more personal messages that can be unlocked once your loose out there.”
The message ended and the image of my grandfather faded away. Jen had gone to the other side of the attic and was already looking for the pincushion. “I found it!” she shouted as she held up a plump smiling red cat with hundreds of pins sticking into it’s round belly. “I don’t see how grandpa could call this ugly, I think its really cute.” She said. “It’s tacky that’s what it is.” I said snatching it from her hand. I just barely noticed her sticking her tongue out at me as I plucked the green pins from the cat’s belly and tossed it aside. “Why did you only take out the green pins?” Jen asked.
“I don’t need the other ones yet.” I told her. Jen picked up the cat, brushed it off and set it on top of a box. “I think it would be best to study these information pins extensively before actually using that thing.” She suggested, without noticing that she had accepted the authenticity of the star gauntlet. For that matter I didn’t notice it right away either, I had time to think about that stuff during our first imprisonment, however Im getting ahead of myself again. The thought of sitting for hours studying the info pins made my brain ache. Thinking about studying for my exiting space adventure made it feel an awful lot like a school project and it started to become a little less exiting. I didn’t want to let my cozen suck the fun out of the most amazing thing to ever happen to me, so I thought up a fast excuse. “Do you think we have all the time in the world?” I asked, “It might take days or weeks to do all that, our parents will be here tomorrow.” She grabbed the stuffed cat and shook it at me. “Don’t you realize that without this kitty we would be completely unprepared for what’s out there? If your not willing to stay and study it then Ill just take it with us.”
Jen being the know-it-all that she is would have used that kitty cat as a way to second-guess every decision that I might try to make. I know it sounds silly now but I really didn’t want to hear her nagging me about everything. The thought of her using those little pins as a way to manipulate and control me ate at my psyche. My fallowing decision has to have been the biggest error in judgment that Ive made in my life. “We can’t possibly bring that cat”, I said “Can you imagine loosing it on some alien world? leave it behind.” Jen hesitated at first, but seeing the logic in my statement decided to put the cat down. If ever there was an argument that she should have won it would have been that one, yet I smiled smugly satisfied in my small victory. A victory which would bring Jen and I untold hardship.
I took the first of the five green pins and inserted it into the gauntlet. The large ruby in the center began to radiate green light. At first, I expected another hologram however all that this pin held was an audio recording.
To operate the star gauntlet one must aim it to the heavens. Where there is life the gauntlet will take you. A bright green glow while aiming the gauntlet indicates life. To travel one must simply make a fist and will the gauntlet forward.
The message ended there but it was enough to get me exited. I put the rest of the green pins in my pocket and turned to Jen grinning ear to ear. “Lets go!” I shouted.
“Aren’t you being hasty? You haven’t even gone over the other green pins.” She said quite rationally. I was caught up in the excitement of knowing that real space aliens were so reachable. “Let’s go now Jen RIGHT NOW!” I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her over to the window. It was a starry cloudless night, the moon was to the far right of us. I raised my arm and pointed the star gauntlet to the night sky. As I did the fin unfolded revealing a shimmering green web connecting it to the gauntlet. “Kenny this is crazy we need to wait!” Jen protested. Slowly I moved my outstretched hand across the starry sky. Finally, the moment I had been waiting for came. The emerald webbing began to radiate a bright and sparkling green light and a laser beam shot from my palm. I pulled Jen closer to me and closed my hand into a fist. The world around us began to distort, the room seemed to twist and contort around space. Before we could remark on this Jen screamed as the entire town plummeted toward us like a tsunami made of earth and houses and concrete. I expected to be crushed like a bug and buried beneath the mass as it came crashing into us. Instead, we found ourselves speeding through space.
“What’s happening?” Jen asked as she squeezed my arm.
“This is insane.” Was all I could say as I saw a large red planet approaching us? We didn’t land on mars as I first expected though. We came within a few hundred feet of its atmosphere as we passed. I marveled at the beauty of the red planet as I looked down at its many mountains and valleys. “What a desolate wasteland” Jen said, completely missing the point.
Before I could realize it I was looking back at mars as it shrank into a small red ball in the distance. I heard a loud shriek and swiftly turned my head to see a number of mountain-sized rocks hurtling toward us. Jen wouldn’t stop screaming, band I admit to being somewhat shaken as well. We were speeding toward a humongous jagged space rock. My mind was plagued by visions of us being splattered onto the asteroid like a fly on a windshield. But before I could think it was there, only feet away and for a moment I thought that I was going to die. That moment passed as quickly as it came and so did the asteroid. We had gone through it as though it weren’t there.
“What just happened?” Jen asked.
“I don’t think were in normal space. It’s probably some other dimension,” I replied. Traveling through the asteroid belt we passed through numerous asteroids. It happened so often that it almost began to feel mundane. By the end I felt silly at how frightened I was of the first one.
“Look!” Jen shouted as she pointed ahead. There was a large red body in front of us, a thousand times larger than mars and growing as we approached. “Jupiter!” was all I could say. To see that planet up close really is like looking at some kind of god. It takes up the entire field of vision like a universe unto itself. I was overcome by a sense of dread and awe as swirling storms and ribbons of gas larger than my entire home world mesmerized me. No picture or video could ever do this world justice. I turned my head my eyes were unable to bear its terrible beauty for another second. I was tempted to look at it again but knew that if I did that world’s beauty would drive me into a pleasant madness.
I distracted myself with the fantastic moons that we passed. First we passed over a beautiful silvery world of shimmering ice, I knew at once from the cracks that lined the surface this could only be Europa. Jen suddenly gasped as she came to a startled realization. “Scientists say that there could be an ocean on Europa that could support life. But if that’s the case we might land there and drown!” Though her logic essentially agreed with what the gauntlet had said I found it hard to put much faith in her idea.
“Jen I really doubt that it’s going to plop us down someplace that we cant possibly survive.”
I turned out to be right and we were looking back at the frozen moon within minutes. Our attention was then grabbed by yet another moon situated to our distant right.
It flashed and churned with geologic activity. Molten lava swirling in beautiful eddies and spewing from volcanoes.
“What a violent and powerful world.” Jen stated, I nodded in agreement.
Jupiter and it’s moons was soon behind us. We moved forward through the vastness of space until the distant ringed planed had grown strikingly large.
Saturn was an impressive world, a gas giant that rivaled the might and beauty of Jupiter. Like the king of planets, Saturn also had swirling and beautiful storms but their beauty paled in comparison to the shimmering rings that encircled the world. They sparkled like a vast sea of diamonds strewn about the planet. Their rotation was an entrancing and mesmerizing sight. Onward we went passing Saturn and leaving it behind us. We were now approaching the great blue beast Uranus.
“Wow Jen ‘Your anus’ is enormous! ” That little joke got me punched in the arm. “Why wont you grow up!” she shouted.
As we left the planet behind us I couldn’t help but notice the difference between it’s rings and those of Saturn. The rings of Uranus (apart from being sideways) were thin and wispy, ghostlike in a way. That whole planet had an eerie feel to it, compared to Jupiter and Saturn which both have swirling storms, Uranus was still and stagnant, an unmoving and cold bottomless ball of frozen gas. That world had in it the cold finality of death. I was glad to have it long behind me. Now Neptune on the other hand was a beautiful world but still every bit as frightening as Uranus if not more so. Like Uranus, the planet seemed eerie and deathlike. However, the dark and swirling storms that dominated Neptune suggested a kind of living death. The world seemed very much to be made of a bottomless and constantly angry sea. Whoever thought to name this place Neptune had perfectly captured its spirit. As we moved through Neptune’s system, we passed a large frozen rocky moon. It was red and seemed to not only lack life but deny it altogether.
“That’s Triton it’s the largest moon in the solar system,” Jen said as we passed above it. There were times that I began to believe that she considered our adventure to be some kind of field trip. However, I suppose that was just the way that she coped. As we left Neptune behind us, we approached two faint red lights. As we drew nearer, they grew brighter and bolder. It was a small icy red planetoid caught in an orbital dance with a moon only half it’s size. Pluto and it’s mistress Charon lovers in an eternal embrace, always together yet always apart. And as the two dancing lovers faded from our sight a dark and terrible globe came into view. We approached this icy gray orb with incredible speed. Before either of us realized what was happening this great ice world was upon us in all of it’s monstrous form.
“This world, we cant possibly land here we’ll die!” Jen shouted as we drew nearer. The planet took up our entire field of vision, all we could see were infinite mountains of solid ice. We flew above the uninhabitable landscape of an icy hell, drawing nearer and nearer to the surface. I shared Jen’s fears of being deposited on a frozen world with no atmosphere and dying an obscure and forgotten death in space.
And of all the places to die, a frozen planet, the tenth planet in our solar system, PLANET X.
TO BE CONTINUED...
