7 SPACE JERKS

7 SPACE JERKS Lunar day 188 Afternoon I had to find Roddy. I didn't know how to hack the computer and dig up the security footage on my own. Now that Nina and everyone else were distracted by the arrival of the new Moonies, I figured Roddy would probably have returned to the rec room to play veeyar games. Sure enough, I found him there, jacked in as usual. Unfortunately, I also found Patton and Lily

Sjoberg. The Sjobergs and their parents were the first lunar tourists. Since Moon Base Alpha ended up costing more than five times what NASA had originally projected, the agency was forced to get additional financing from space tourism. Maximum Adventure Travel ponied up the money in return for two concessions: 1) A residence at MBA would be converted into a "deluxe lunar hotel suite." 2) Maximum Adventure had the exclusive rights to charge incredibly wealthy people staggering sums of money to come stay at Moon Base Alpha. In truth, the "deluxe lunar hotel suite" isn't that deluxe. There was no way to deliver anything particularly fancy to MBA, like nice mattresses or Jacuzzi tubs. The suite has an actual window, and the SlimScreens are slightly higher quality than ours, but other than that it's as lame as every other room at MBA. The tourists still have to eat the same awful food we do and use the same sadistic toilets. And yet MBA is the only place for tourists to stay on the moon, so incredibly rich suckers are lining up to shell out big bucks to come here. The Sjobergs outbid hundreds of other elite families in a silent auction, spending what's rumored to be more than

half a billion dollars to be the first lunar tourist family. The money bought them a four-month stay at MBA, which they were already four weeks into. Hard as it is to believe, half a billion isn't much money for the Sjobergs. They are some of the richest people on earth. Lars, the father, made his fortune in deep-sea oil drilling. Sonja, the mother, inherited half of Norway. Together they have so much money, they've run out of ways to spend it. They have more homes in more countries than anyone can count, a fleet of private jets, a solid gold bathtub, and a pet snow leopard named Schatzi. They've already visited every place on earth, so when the chance came to go to the moon, they jumped at it. Unfortunately, just like the rest of us, they discovered Moon Base Alpha wasn't what they'd hoped. But even if MBA had been absolutely incredible, with fancy suites and gourmet meals, I still doubt the Sjobergs would have been happy. They're spoiled rotten. Back on earth, servants did everything for them. And I mean everything. They had cooks, gardeners, butlers, dog walkers, maids, doormen, barbers, decorators, masseuses, stablemen, pool boys, and art curators. But since there were only four seats available on the rocket,

there was no way for them to bring even a single butler to MBA. So, for the first time in their lives, the Sjobergs have to do things for themselves. And they hate it. They've been so pampered; none of them has the slightest idea how to work anything, no matter how simple. On the first night at MBA, Lars Sjoberg nearly lost a finger trying to use a can opener. Once they learned they were incompetent without servants, the Sjobergs came up with a new plan: Try to make everyone else at MBA do things for them. This didn't work out so well either. In the first place, they never asked us to do anything. They ordered us to do it. Second, all the adults had plenty to do already. They couldn't just drop everything to make breakfast for a bunch of helpless rich people. So everyone told the Sjobergs they'd have to handle things on their own. (Except Chang Hi-Tech, who bluntly informed Lars Sjoberg that he should get off his lazy butt before Chang drove his foot up it.) From there things only got worse. None of the Sjobergs had been very nice to begin with. Now, realizing they'd spent more than some entire countries made in a year to end up in their own private hell, they turned on us, becoming even

nastier than before. Any encounter with them was a bad one. The only Moonie any of them remotely got along with was Cesar Marquez, and that's only because Lily Sjoberg had a crush on him. And since Cesar didn't like his little brother much, the Sjoberg kids were worse to Roddy than to anyone else. When I found them in the rec room, Patton and Lily had just swiped Roddy's hologoggles and were playing keep-away. "Come on! Give them back!" Roddy whined as he haplessly ran back and forth between the twins. "I was just about to liberate Titan from the Pernicious Skrinks!" "Ooh!" Patton Sjoberg taunted. "If you're such a big hero, why can't you get your goggles back?" "Why do you guys have to be such jerks?" Roddy mewled. "Why do you have to be such a loser?" Lily shot back. Normally I might have hustled off before anyone noticed me. I didn't like the idea of being on Patton Sjoberg's bad side. In addition to being as mean as a rabid badger, he was also quite strong. He spent most of his time at MBA in the gym, bulking up his muscles. His biceps had grown by an inch in the last

four weeks. And Lily was pretty strong herself, surprisingly tall and broad for a girl. But I needed a favor from Roddy, and Roddy wasn't much for helping anyone but himself. So I figured I'd get on his good side. Roddy made a desperate lunge for Patton, who flipped the goggles over his head. Given the low gravity, they sailed high into the air. I cocked my legs and launched myself as hard as I could. On earth my vertical jump was about two feet. On the moon it's four times that. I flew over Lily's head and snatched the goggles before she could. Unfortunately, even after six months I was still mastering low gravity. I flew much farther than I'd expected, crashed into the wall, and tumbled back down to the floor. Still, I managed to keep a hold on the goggles. When I got to my feet, the Sjobergs were flanking me, glaring hatefully with their beady blue eyes. "Look who thinks he's a hero now," Patton scoffed. "Give them back, Dash." He reached for the goggles, but I yanked them away. "They're not yours." "They're not yours, either," Lily said. "We're