Journey to the Land of the Lonely (Book 1 in The Galactic Adventures of Alex McKenzie series.)

By Larry Rosenzweig

Follow the lives of several colourful characters from other planets and dimensions whose bizarre individual circumstances cause them to leave their birthplaces and journey to the Land of the Lonely. Some of the characters are decent and peace-loving, whilst others are decidedly evil and bent on destruction.

The story is told through the eyes of an outback Australian boy named Alex McKenzie. Expect to laugh, cry and bite your nails as you enter a world of fantasy and excitement.

Will good prevail over evil?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Rosenzweig
• Release date: May 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301953837

Larry Rosenzweig

Having dashed my way from South Africa to Australia in 1987 - on the back of a very fit and confused looking Springbok, who fortunately also turned out to be an excellent long distance ocean swimmer - I soon settled into the Ozzie way of life. I studied Psychology, only to discover that no textbooks or theories identified any condition that even closely accounted for my level of loopiness.I am married to a wonderful, loving woman, who is also a yet-to-be-discovered comedian. She has such a wicked sense of humour that I’m often reduced to tears. My playful darling has a heart of gold and always does the right thing by everybody. She is a loyal partner and doting parent to our brood of five. She is a lawyer by day and a fluffy toy mender by night. She’s my Cinderella, only much more radiant!I have five quirky children, each equipped with a great sense of humour and wonderful personality. They make me laugh, cry, and often sigh. But I love them all. We have a computer-wiz, a dog-whisperer, a thrill-seeker, a fact-finder and a sugar-diviner.The characters from Books 1,2, 3 and 4 have been alive in my head for years, hence my continual scalp itch. It is great to finally set them free. There are still hundreds of other characters waiting to be released. I anticipate releasing at least ten books in this series ... possibly more!

Book preview

The Galactic Adventures of Alex McKenzie

Book I

Journey To The Land Of The Lonely

Larry Rosenzweig

Copyright © Larry Rosenzweig 2009

www.larryrosenzweig.com.au

[e-mail]

Published by Capital Books (2009)

An imprint of Melbourne Books

www.melbournebooks.com.au

Reprinted by Tingleman Print Media Group (2010)

3/ 11 Brough Street

Springvale, Melbourne, Victoria, 3171

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Rosenzweig, Larry.

Title: The Galactic Adventures of Alex McKenzie Book 1: Journey to the Land of the Lonely.

ISBN: 9781877096440 (pbk.)

Dewey Number: A823.4

Front and back cover artwork: Heath McKenzie

Image of the planet on the front cover adapted from photo supplied by NASA and the

NSSDC

Images: www.freeimages.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Life’s not always fair. Sometimes you can get a splinter even sliding down a rainbow.

— Cherralea Morgen

Special thanks to:

Mel for supporting me.

Alex for challenging me.

Dani for believing in me.

Kaylie for adoring me.

Chockie for listening to me.

The rainbow with splinters is also the one that has the pot of gold at the end. You need to just keep sliding. For nothing good in life should come too easy.

—Larry Rosenzweig

CHAPTER 1

NEURO

It is well accepted amongst the most respected galactic scholars that the Sethonians were by far the most intelligent known race to have ever existed in the greater universe. They are also credited with having been the most socially inappropriate and disgracefully grubby of all creatures.

News of their annihilation at the hands of the massive Groveld asteroid was greeted with a mixture of emotions. Whilst the galactic scientific community were devastated, all others were glad to be rid of these ill-mannered, foul-smelling, arrogant, know-alls!

Sethonians were like walking encyclopaedias of knowledge, like breathing Google searches. You could ask them the most complicated of questions and almost always get the correct answer, provided you were prepared to endure the continuous nose picking, earwax removal, farting, bum scratching, and burping that accompanied their responses, as well as the wafting stench of their dirty, unbathed bodies.

It was their armpits that were the real killers. Had they kept their arms by their sides, things may have been a little more tolerable. Unfortunately, as they spoke, they waved their arms wildly, causing their armpits to work like powerful toxic pumps. It was therefore always wise to bring along a few clothes pegs to block your nose – just in case.

It was also always advisable to stand at least ten metres upwind of a Sethonian so that your scent wafted towards them, rather than their lethal pong wafting towards you. When it was one of those days where the wind swirled around a lot, you had no choice but to keep shifting your position.

You did not have to worry about explaining why you were continually moving around, though, because Sethonians were so incredibly self-obsessed that they would not have even noticed if you had stripped down to your underwear whilst moving around, or even if you had cut off one leg and swung it from side to side furiously, whilst hopping around on the other leg, singing ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’. Every moment of every day was all about them!

Sethonians also lacked any sense of social etiquette. Their favourite topic of conversation, even at the dinner table, was bodily functions. They would always proudly give anyone willing to listen a totally uncensored account of their daily bowel movements. They also failed to understand the purpose and meaning of small talk or social pleasantries. They did not mince their words and gave absolute down-the-line responses to questions. If for instance, you made the fatal error of greeting them with a throwaway line like, ‘Hi, how are you?’, be prepared to spend the next hour hearing a blow by blow account, of exactly how they were – from the top of their head to the tip of their toes.

It is said that every sight, sound, touch and smell was analysed by Sethonians and then stored in their enormous brains’ vast memory banks for future reference. As their hunger for knowledge and advancement grew over the centuries, their sophisticated brains worked out ways to hijack most of the nutrients that should have gone to other parts of their bodies. Consequently, over time, their brains became progressively larger and their bodies progressively scrawnier. By the time of their recent demise, they resembled massive lollypops on fragile sticks.

Yet their ridiculous appearance did not bother them in the slightest. They believed that they would eventually be able to move around, and move things around, using mental thought alone. So things like arms and legs and fingers and toes would eventually become redundant anyway. They would be unnecessary excess baggage!

Many of them had already started to hover ever so slightly above the ground for a few seconds, totally unaided. It is strongly acknowledged amongst learned galactic scholars that they would have eventually achieved their end goal, were it not for the cataclysmic event that led to their untimely passing.

A lot of the more advanced technology found in the greater universe today is attributed to the Sethonians. They are believed to have built the very first sub-atomic particle thrust spacecraft and to have been the first to discover the wonders of light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, otherwise known as Laser technology. They are also attributed with having produced the very first hydro-panel.

Prior to its destruction, the planet of Seth resembled one enormous, fully integrated circuit board. The facades of every single house and building cleverly doubled as one useful electronic component or another. They took the shape of enormous circuit breakers, mercury switches, fuses, resistors, filament lamps, capacitors, transformers, solenoids, fuel cells, ceramic resonators, plug and socket connectors, relay switches, inductors … and on and on!

Thousands of the more cutting-edge electronic components that dotted the landscape of Seth are yet to be discovered on Earth. These include magnidian carbodetheral stabilisers, lazorpidian deflectors, mercuzal vibroformers, and nucleic stretho-resonators.

Seth’s square rather than round shape added to its overall look. At night, the millions of red and blue laser sensors created a skyline more spectacular than the dazzling neon billboards of Las Vegas.

When Seth exploded, technological debris was sent flying into outer space in all directions. It is believed that some of this debris even managed to make its way to Earth years later. Each component’s discovery was kept top secret by the governments in power at the time. Countries that were lucky enough to receive these free technological marvels put together teams of their finest scientists and set them the exciting task of unravelling these new technologies and identifying useful future applications.

It is quite possible that the lasers that drive our Nintendo Wiis, Xbox 360s and PS3s, are thanks to the Sethonians. Many innocent earthlings who saw these enormous glowing chunks of technology fall to the ground were rigorously discredited in nasty government-funded smear campaigns. Still, many of the more steadfast accounts, often corroborated by several eyewitnesses, sparked enough interest to get airtime on TV shows like A Current Affair and 60 Minutes. Of course, all such claims were vehemently denied by those on the government payroll.

From his highly classified location at the infamous military base, Area 51, in southern Nevada, Colonel Jed Rodgers responded to such allegations.

‘Hey, Tracey,’ laughed Colonel Rodgers arrogantly, ‘People love their conspiracy theories, don’t they? Next thing, someone will accuse the US government of having poisoned Elvis Presley!’

‘Did the US government poison Elvis Presley?’ smiled Tracey. ‘Of course not!’ shouted Colonel Rodgers as his head nodded unconsciously, his pupils dilated, his palms began to sweat, his nose became itchy, and he struggled to swallow.

Neuro Synapse was a very typical-looking 19-year-old Sethonian. He had a massive bald head that was about the size of an inflated beach ball. It housed an enormous, highly sophisticated brain. His scalp was lily-white and its elasticised skin coped well with the pressure exerted on it by his continually expanding brain. His entire scalp and forehead was adorned with hundreds of thick blue veins and red arteries that bulged outwards like ugly keloid scars. The blue veins danced around wildly every time he spoke and gave the impression of wriggling earthworms.

In contrast to his colossal head, his body was skeletally thin. His ribs protruded outwards like sharp daggers, and his elbows and knees looked like painful inflammations on their toothpick-like arms and matchstick-like legs. His shoulders and neck slouched forward under the weight of his head.

His lips were thin and cold, and his yellow, jaundiced-looking eyes were exceptionally creepy. The lazy left eyelid was always no more than half open and its eyeball continually shifted from side to side. The rigid right eyelid was always overly wide open, totally incapable of ever closing (even when he slept), and its eyeball never moved even a millimetre. Both eyes tended to water quite a lot and the left one had the annoying habit of blinking exceedingly rapidly whenever he was thinking.

His ears were very large and also elasticised. They were used as a surrogate handkerchief for his continually dripping nostrils. Consequently, his ears were constantly coated in a thick mucus crust – which he thoroughly enjoyed picking at and eating.

His armpits were the only part of his body that had any hair. And boy, oh boy, were they hairy! Each resembled a full-blown, 20-centimetre-long beard. The hairs were all matted and tangled, and formed several perfect Rastafarian dreadlocks. The hairs housed almost every known species of lice and flea.

The spaces between the four toes on each of his scrawny feet were packed with more sticky black toe-jam than a 200-gram jar of Vegemite. Growing from the base and sides of each foot was a mushroom-like fungus that smelled sulphury and seemed to bubble and fester as he walked. His fingernails looked like ten squashed baby cockroaches and relied on natural attrition for a trim and manicure.

His body skin was damp and clammy, and his hands were wet and slimy. It was like shaking hands with a dead fish that has been left unrefrigerated for an entire week. You felt an overwhelming urge to repeatedly scrub your hands with the strongest possible detergent after shaking hands with him.

Like all Sethonians, he never once considered taking a bath or a shower and stunk like rotting garbage. The intensity of his stench depended completely on when last he had been caught in one of Seth’s rare but heavy downpours. It always took a really good soaking to purge his skin of its vile smell.

His teeth were also left to their own devices. As a result, all 15 of the remaining rotten ones were encased in thick layers of yellow plaque. His breath always smelled as if he had just eaten a skunk.

Being a typical Sethonian adolescent, Neuro dedicated most of his time to the pursuit of knowledge and brilliance. He read and memorised volume after volume of the galactic encyclopaedia. With over 50,000 existing volumes and about 100 new volumes added every year, there was plenty to keep him busy. The areas that most interested him were astronomy, quantum physics, and mathematics.

He had been tracking the Groveld asteroid for over five years now, and had recently made a startling discovery. According to his calculations, this enormous, fiery rock had changed its trajectory ever so slightly and was now on a direct collision course with his beloved planet Seth. His calculations spanned more than 10,000 pages and had been meticulously checked and cross-checked over 1000 times.

He rang one of Seth’s head scientists, Ruween Flog, and advised him of the impending doom. Ruween consulted other distinguished scientists and mathematicians on this matter. To ease their own minds, they did tests and ran numbers for two weeks straight. At the end of this lengthy and tiresome process, they concluded that Neuro was blatantly wrong and had completely wasted their valuable time.

Neuro begged them to have a look at his calculations rather than rely solely on their own. Ruween and his colleagues found it highly offensive that a 19-year-old kid would have the audacity to challenge their exceptional brains. Despite Neuro having already won several prestigious mathematics and science awards, they were not about to let this ‘upstart’ undermine their genius, and, less importantly, cause unnecessary panic.

From that point onwards, they treated Neuro with utter contempt. Each time he phoned them, they hung up on him. Each time he sent them a piece of written correspondence, they divided the pages equally amongst them and used them as toilet paper. When he tried to send them the Sethonian equivalent of emails, they would simply press ‘Reply’, attach a new, sophisticated computer virus and press ‘Send’.

On the one and only occasion that he managed to disenable their Fort Knoxish style security systems and enter their fancy offices, they all blocked their ears and started chanting, ‘La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!’ loudly, until he finally gave up trying to speak to them and left defeated.

Despite receiving the cold shoulder from these so-called geniuses, he continued to express his grave concerns to anyone willing to listen. On every occasion though, he was treated like a third-class citizen. Why would they take the word of a 19-year-old kid over the word of a panel of renowned experts? Responses ranged from boredom, to amusement, to pity. Even his parents and siblings started heckling him. ‘So, Prophet of Doom, what other disasters do you foresee on the horizon?’ laughed his younger brother, Cerebellum.

By this point in time, Neuro had become really bitter and twisted and longed to see the expression of fear on every single imbecile’s face, including those of his family, when the Groveld asteroid finally came into view. By then, it would be far too late to escape. He would be vindicated. It would teach them all a lesson for doubting his brilliance.

A few days before the Groveld asteroid was due to hit Seth, Neuro packed his spacecraft with his worldly possessions and sufficient food supplies, and then, without saying goodbye to anyone, left for the safety of a burnt out mini-planet called Silcon. This massive lump of crumbling coal is totally desolate, and a great place to visit if you want complete isolation and not a distraction in the world.

Cerebellum awoke especially early to bid his paranoid older brother a temporary farewell. ‘See you soon, Prophet of Doom!’ he laughed. ‘Enjoy the nothingness that is Silcon … Oh, and please bring me back one of those tacky T-shirts that read, My brother visited Silcon and all he brought back for me was this burnt out T-shirt!’

‘You won’t be seeing me, or anything else for that matter, ever again!’ smiled Neuro. ‘For the dead cannot see … And the T-shirt that I and only I will be wearing will read, They refused to listen to what I said. Yet I am alive and they are all dead!’

Cerebellum’s right eye started to water a bit more than usual and the blue veins on his lily-white scalp twitched furiously. ‘We will see about that!’ he screamed venomously, and stormed off. ‘What if Neuro is right?’ he thought nervously.

Having reached Silcon, Neuro impatiently counted down the hours till the main event. He was like an excited kid awaiting their birthday present. He took the opportunity to rehearse the speech that he would soon present to the various galactic satellite news channels. Every single galactic reporter would be dying to get the exclusive scoop on how he managed to be the sole survivor and what it felt like to be the last of his species.

He would definitely embellish the story a little bit to give it maximum impact. He would tell a harrowing tale of how he begged and pleaded with his family members to board his spacecraft, and how they stubbornly refused. He would secretly squeeze a tiny slice of raw Gunnee (a vegetable similar to an onion) into his eyes to create artificial tears as he spoke. The fact that this was a complete fabrication did not seem to bother him in the slightest. ‘If the audience wants tears and emotion, that is what I will give them!’ he thought aloud.

If things went well, perhaps he would even be invited to appear on the highest rating of all galactic shows, Late Night Live with Speldig Slive! What an amazing platform this would be for him to belittle all of the nincompoops who doubted him and to gloat about his personal genius. The fact that he would be rubbishing the dead did not seem to bother him either.

He was really glad that he had kept his 10,000-page journal of mathematical calculations. This would serve as proof of his genius to anyone who doubted his story. This journal would no doubt sell for a huge amount one day on the online Galacbay. He imagined the movie and book deals that would soon follow. Who would play the role of him in the movie, though? Who would have a big enough head?

Finally, the moment of impact arrived and he counted it down joyously. ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven …’ He then calmly opened a packet of Bedew (similar to popcorn) and chewed away as he watched the greatest fireworks display of his life. Seth exploded with the same intensity as an egg in a microwave. It literally splattered in all directions – polluting space with a deluge of electronic components and gadgetry.

‘I told you! I told you! I told you!’ he screamed with absolute delight. But when it was all over, he cried like a baby. He had lost his family, his species, and his planet. He soon composed himself and swore that this would be the last time he would ever cry; the last time he would ever show weakness. From this point onwards, it would all be about him!

‘Should I reveal myself now to the rest of the galaxy or wait a few days for maximum impact?’ he thought aloud, rubbing his damp, slimy hands together gleefully. ‘Lying low for a few days is definitely the better option. Let them first talk about us Sethonians as being extinct. Let them do their insincere obituaries, pathetic reflections and faulty analyses of us as a species. Then, I will reveal myself and force them to update their blogs from Extinct to Almost Extinct! This should cause quite a stir! … Hmm, what can I do in the meantime to burn some time?’

For now, he would have to be content with picking his nose, biting his fungicidal toenails, and contemplating his future. He could never have predicted the series of events that were about to unfold and how they would impact on his future …

CHAPTER 2

MAJIKA, FLOPSY & WANDINA

On a far more primitive yet magical planet in a completely different dimension, a petite teenage Sugar fairy named Majika was gently awoken by the dappled lime-green sunlight that filtered in through the finely woven Drudger silk curtain adorning her circular bedroom window.

The bedroom window frame was made from a broad section of Squattle tree trunk that had been hollowed out. The Drudger silk curtain fitted over its circular opening like a tight glove and hooked onto its rough outer bark. In the hollowed-out tree trunk, there lived a family of obsessive-compulsive Drudger worms. They created and maintained the silk curtain. As with most perfectionists, they were also extreme ‘grumpy bums’.

Although Majika normally liked to luxuriate under the warmth of her comfy Guffy feather quilt for at least a half hour before rising, there was no time for lazing about today. On top of it being her turn to visit the ancient, magical Shrewd trees and talk to them, she also needed to prepare herself for the final of the ‘Fastest Sugar fairy in Flush Fleas’ race that she would be competing in later this morning. Her opponent for the final was none other than her rich and snobby Sugar Fairy neighbour, Wandina Flishy.

Majika stood up and stretched her arms, then her legs, and then her wings. Her fully outstretched wings spanned close to one metre – almost twice her height. Effortlessly, she ripped a gaping hole into a section of the Drudger silk curtain that corresponded perfectly with her line of sight.

To the family of Drudger worms, who had been peacefully sleeping on the outside of the silk curtain, Majika’s gentle ripping action felt like a full-scale earthquake. They awoke with great shock and rushed towards the massive