3 I’ll Believe It When I See It

Chapter 3 I'LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT Now, those of you who have been following the Genius Files know that I don't particularly like to describe what characters look like. For one thing, it's boring. Nobody wants to read page after page about somebody's face. For another thing, if you have a short attention span like many of us do, you probably forget what characters look like five minutes after you read the description. That's why it doesn't say what Coke and Pep look like in any of these books. You want to know what the twins look like? Look at the book covers! There they are, jumping off a cliff, diving out of a boat or a helicopter. And if you want to know what Dr. Warsaw, Mrs. Higgins, the bowler dudes, or any of the other characters look like, use your

imagination. That's what it's there for. Having said all that, rules are meant to be broken. And this seems like the perfect time to break one. You probably have a mental image of what a space alien looks like. You've seen hundreds of them in schlocky movies, TV shows, commercials, comic books, and so on. They're usually green, for some unknown reason, and they have these enormous, bulbous heads that are way out of proportion to their ridiculously skinny bodies. They never seem to have any hair, and they just stand there with emotionless, creepy-looking, almond-shaped eyes. They move in slow motion, if they move at all. Well, just because somebody in Hollywood decided that aliens should look like that doesn't mean that's what they really look like. No, when Pep opened her eyes and glimpsed the alien for the first time, she saw a creature that was completely different from what she expected. Picture this...

A round, doughy creature, about the size of a portable refrigerator. It had very small legs and feet with no pinky toes. At the end of each arm was a "hand" that was sort of a cross between a claw and a pair of pliers. The alien was wearing some sort of robe that changed color every few seconds. The alien's face was a wonder to behold. It had two eyes (which shouldn't be taken for granted outside our solar system), but they were red. The eyes popped out slightly from the head, and they were all the more noticeable because the creature did not have any visible eyebrows or eyelashes. Or eyelids, for that matter. The eyes could not be closed, which made them even more frightening. Its nose looked much like ours, but the alien had a wide, lipless, sunken mouth with one golden tooth in the middle. The other teeth appeared to have hair on them. The alien had no external ears. Unlike your typical Hollywood alien, this

one had hair on its head—a patch of yellow-, black-, orange-, and red-patterned hair that glowed in the dark. The skin, if you could call it skin, was reddish and translucent—much like fish scales. It appeared to be slimy to the touch, if one were to be so inclined to reach out and touch it. Got all that? A few pages from now you'll probably forget the description, which is fine. Just remember this—it was a hideous-looking creature. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Pep shrieked. It was a scream that seemed to go on forever. If the twins had not been confined inside a sealed, soundproof enclosure, Pep would have been heard for miles in each direction. Everything went dark again. "Did you see that?" "No, see what?" her brother replied. "I was facing the other way." "It was like... an alien. Or something." "You're hallucinating," Coke told his sister.

"I saw him!" Pep insisted. "Or it. Or whatever it was. It must have taken a picture of us with that flash of light." "There's no such thing as aliens," Coke scoffed. "Oh, I suppose we just got sucked up off the ground in Roswell, New Mexico, by a mysterious light that doesn't exist in our color spectrum, and aliens had nothing to do with it?" "I'll believe it when I see it with my own eyes," Coke said firmly. At that moment the light flashed on again, and this time it stayed on. "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Coke and Pep shrieked simultaneously. Instinctively, they clung to each other for dear life. They were shaking, shivering. Their hearts were beating rapidly. The alien didn't move, or make a sound, or react in any way. "D-do you believe me now?" Pep asked, staring at the thing. "You're crushing my neck!"

Still terrified, Coke relaxed his grip on his sister, never taking his eyes off the creature on the other side of the bars. "Did you ever hear of the Fermi Paradox?" he whispered. "Of course not," Pep whispered back. "Only nerds like you know stuff like that." Coke ignored that remark. The alien hadn't moved. "Our galaxy has been around for billions of years," Coke whispered. "And there are billions of stars like our sun in the galaxy. And a lot of those stars must have Earth-like planets circling around them. So the Fermi Paradox asks, 'Where is everybody?' With all those billions of planets out there capable of supporting life, humans have never seen evidence of extraterrestrial life." "Until now," Pep whispered, staring at the alien. "I always said I wouldn't believe in anything that I couldn't see with my own eyes," Coke