Jahv's playing of the game had attracted a few onlookers, but the oversized sweatshirt he was wearing hid his odd hands. As far as anyone knew, Keith hoped, this was just a regular kid who was really good at video games.
Then trouble walked into the arcade.
Keith cringed. Three older teenagers, one of them smoking, all of them looking and acting tough, surveyed the room, making sure that some attention was being paid to them. Keith swore under his breath. "Hey, guys — serious trouble."
Davy and Martin looked up. Martin went pale. Davy remarked, "You know those guys?"
"I know OF them." said Keith. "They think they're some kind of local gang. They're just troublemakers, but they are serious troublemakers. They've been causing grief at this mall for weeks, but they always manage to duck out before security can get to them."
"They're also coming this way." said Davy.
"Yeah, I was afraid of that. They can't stand anybody getting more attention than them." said Keith.
"Well, looky here." snarled one of the teenagers. "Hey, Bruno, this little punk's managed to triple your best score!"
"What?!" roared the one named Bruno. "Hey, punk! Yeah, you with the shades and the stupid cap! Don't you know that's my game?"
Jahv turned. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it was your property."
Keith groaned. Jahv was trying to be honest, but he knew how that comment would be interpreted.
"A little wise-ass, huh!?" growled Bruno. "Okay, guys, get him out of here!" Pushing Keith, Martin, and Davy aside before any of them could react, although Martin had already backed off quite a bit, the two toughs that Bruno was ordering around picked up Jahv and carried him out of the arcade. There was a large fountain just outside of the arcade, and the two teens threw Jahv into it, and proceeded to laugh following the splash.
"Ohhh, not good." said Keith. "So much for the make-up."
"We need to get out of here, right now!" urged Davy.
"I think maybe we can." said Keith. "Those three idiots are still laughing themselves stupid. Let's go."
The boys didn't get far. They grabbed Martin and were trying to work their way past the three bullies, when Bruno spotted them. "Where d'ya think YOU'RE going?! You were with that little freak, so you're gonna get the same as him! Or worse!"
One of the punks pushed Martin down, and clearly Davy and Keith were next, when an impossibly loud voice roared and echoed from outside the arcade. "YOU LEAVE MY FRIENDS ALONE!"
All heads turned towards the entrance of the arcade. Standing there, dripping wet, the make-up and the cap gone, his eyes actually glowing a brilliant bright blue, was a thoroughly furious Jahv.
"What the —?!" one of the bullies started to say, but in that instant, Jahv raised his right arm, and, incredibly, a bolt of lightning shot from his fingertips. It soared into the video game Jahv had been playing, which the three toughs were still standing closest to. The game's screen shattered, and sparks and smoke flew from the machine.
"Jeez!" exclaimed Keith, ducking out of the way and out of the arcade, with Davy and Martin close behind. "Remind me never to make him mad at me!"
Even Jahv looked surprised at what had happened. "That was — too much. That wasn't what I wanted to have happen."
"Worry about it later!" said Keith. "We need to get out of here, and right now!"
"I may have something that can help." said Jahv, reaching into his backpack and pulling out a device that was about the size of a large flashlight, but looked more like the handle to a Star Wars lightsaber. "This is a personal cloaking device. I can expand the field of it somewhat. Stay close to me, and they shouldn't be able to see any of us."
Jahv activated the device. To the other boys, it didn't seem as if much had happened. The air seemed to shimmer a bit, but that was all. But clearly something had happened, based on the expressions on everybody else's faces. "Hey!" yelled one of the punks. "Where'd those little punks go?"
"I don't think that matters", said the owner of the arcade, bringing down the metal gate that closed the arcade to the rest of the mall. "You three punks have been causing me grief for weeks. Now you blew up one of my machines. Security's on its way, you're not going anywhere this time, and I intend to have you arrested."
"We didn't blow up your machine! It was that weirdo kid that shot lightning at us!" snarled Bruno.
"I don't see any kids." said the arcade owner. "Certainly not one that could do something as ridiculous as that. Anybody else see any kids?"
The other patrons of the arcade, who had also suffered at the hands of these three teen punks, all shook their heads.
Jahv, Davy, Martin, and Keith left the mall, trying not to laugh, just as the mall's security forces arrived.
Minutes later, the boys were on their bikes, Jahv trying to keep his head tucked into the collar of the sweatshirt and still hang onto Davy. Keith had wrapped his shirt around Jahv's head somewhat to try to conceal the antennae without hurting Jahv, and without making it look like there was an accident victim riding on the back of Davy's bike.
They returned to the pond, where Jahv entered his dome tent — and to Keith and Martin it looked like he had vanished into thin air for a few moments — and returned with lemonade and candy bars for everyone. He'd also, as was customary for him, dispensed with any clothing. As hot and tired and the other three boys were from a somewhat faster bike ride than before, Davy, Martin, and Keith were pretty well down to their underwear.
"I hope we're not going to get into trouble over this." said Davy.
Keith, previously the most concerned about that, shook his head. "Nah. I know the arcade owner. He's been wanting a reason to get rid of those punks ever since they started causing trouble. He just got it. Besides, who'd believe the truth?"
"Speaking of which," said Davy, looking at Jahv, "you never said you could — shoot lightning!"
Jahv actually looked a little shaken. "I didn't mean to! All that was supposed to happen was a minor static discharge. All it was supposed to do was get those three bad guys to back off a bit. I didn't intend to blow up the machine!"
"Then what went wrong?" asked Martin.
"Well, I think I know." said Jahv. "Now that I've had time to think about it. Is everything on this world run by electricity?"
"Pretty much, yeah." said Davy. "Everything mechanical, anyway."
Jahv nodded. "That's it, then. There must be much more electricity at use on this world than there is on mine."
"Well, so much for your first outing into the outside world." remarked Keith.
"Yeah." said Jahv. "Can we do it again tomorrow?"
The three boys looked at Jahv, stunned beyond words. Finally it was Keith who spoke. "I don't THINK so!" he yelled, tackling Jahv right into the pond with a mighty splash. Davy and Martin dove in immediately after. And there they spent the remainder of the afternoon, diving and splashing water, with no one around to intrude.
Part 3
It had become clear that it simply wasn't safe for the young alien boy Jahv to go out in public. Disguises worked to a certain degree, but Jahv was simply too inexperienced with the culture and the way Earth-people acted to ever fit in. However, that didn't mean that he had to be out of touch with his new homeworld. Certainly he had friends like Niklas and Davy, who had rescued him from the nearby pond into which he'd fallen when he first arrived, and Keith and Martin, whom had met Jahv more recently, introduced to him by Davy. And, of course, there were other ways to study the world.
Everyone had pretty much agreed that the best way for someone who couldn't actually go "out there" and explore, would be to do so by computer. Unfortunately, the computer that Jahv had brought out of his seemingly bottomless backpack was totally incompatible with anything built on Earth. That meant having to somehow procure a computer for Jahv to use.
For a bunch of kids with no substantial sources of income, who couldn't very well explain to anyone what the computer was needed for, this would not be easy. Jahv was fairly well convinced that even if all Davy and the others could locate were various components and parts, even in poor condition, he could assemble them into something that would work with this world's computer systems. The technology was, by his standards, simplistic enough that even though it was of obvious «foreign» origin, he could work with it.
This resulted in the four boys, in their spare time, searching behind electronics stores, business dumpsters, and wherever else they could think of to look to see what they could come up with. What amazed all of them was what large businesses actually threw away. Within less than two weeks, they had salvaged a huge mess of assorted computer components, including a CD-Rom drive, cables, various plug-in boards, a couple of disc drives, «outdated» software, and various other items out of a wide range of dumpsters.
The real break had come when Niklas and Davy had been caught lugging a huge, intact monitor away from alongside somebody's trash can on a neighboring street. The owner had come out and asked what they wanted with it. They explained, more or less truthfully, that they were building their own computer system out of spare parts as a special project for when school started in the fall. The owner, himself a computer builder, had just upgraded to an even larger monitor, and not only let the boys take the monitor, but gave them $20 to help them. That went towards a brand-new keyboard for the computer, the one item they hadn't been able locate a decent enough specimen of for the project.
Jahv's dome-tent looked like an electronic junkpile for a while, as the young alien boy sought to make sense out of the technology. He grasped it readily enough, though, and roughly a week later had built his computer. The end result was a nightmarish miasma of components, including even a few from Jahv's own computer that he'd somehow managed to integrate into the final contraption, that looked to be one part Star Trek, two parts Radio Shack, and three parts of half-junked God-knows-what held together with the technological equivalent of adhesive tape and bubble gum.
Just turning the thing on resulted in a racket that sounded like a cross between a chipmunk and a lawn mower. But the silly thing worked. It not only worked, but it had enough memory capacity so that as soon as Jahv was able to get online, through of all things a satellite link he'd rigged up, he'd been able to download all the additional software he needed.
The thing was probably second only to computers one would find at NASA or the Pentagon. It wasn't just a computer, either. Thanks to the satellite link, Jahv was also able to use the device as a television set, and had also hooked a video game unit into it. Among their rummagings, Keith had come up with a broken down Playstation unit.
Jahv had quickly turned into an experienced hacker. If he'd been using an actual modem, half the business corporations on the planet probably would have tracked him down by now. He'd downloaded «beta» versions for video games the others hadn't even heard of, and had recently picked up designs for some of the planned aliens for "Star Wars Episode 2". This, of course, got him more than a few weird looks from the rest of the boys when he pointed at one particularly bizarre specimen of LucasFilm life and remarked, "Hey, I know this guy!"
On this particular day, Davy and Keith had headed out to Jahv's cloaked dome-tent. Martin had told Keith he'd join them later in the afternoon. Davy had found a discarded VCR and wondered if Jahv would be able to somehow hook it into the entire mess. Keith speculated that if they had found a microwave oven, Jahv would probably be able to hook THAT into the computer and program his meals in advance.
Not that Jahv needed such a device. One of his more wondrous machines was a food replicator that seemed to make meals out of thin air.
Jahv had been delighted to receive the VCR, but didn't plan to hook it up immediately. He was in the midst of testing a new program, but invited Davy and Keith in to spend some time and see what happened, anyway.
As usual, Jahv was stark naked when Davy and Keith arrived. Children on Jahv's homeworld didn't wear clothing except in special circumstances like space travel. Since it was yet another hot summer day, neither Davy nor Keith were wearing much, either. Keith was wearing denim shorts and sandals, and Davy had shown up wearing his usual coveralls, which he'd discarded once he'd entered the tent, so he was just wearing his boxer shorts.
Davy had come to regard Jahv as one of his best friends, and since he lived closest to the pond near where Jahv had pitched his tent, visited as often as possible. Keith, on the other hand, saw in Jahv something of a kindred spirit. Jahv had run away from home, literally light years, something Keith had considered doing more than once, and had nearly accomplished one time, if not on the light-years scale.
"So, what are you up to?" asked Davy, as the three boys gathered around the computer.
"I just recently found out that this planet has a huge radio telescope, aimed at the stars, picking up radio signals." said Jahv. "It's in a place called Arecibo, Puerto Rico." Jahv's mastery of language had come a long way. Even though he'd picked up on the language early on by a brief telepathic contact with Niklas, his pronunciation of names had taken longer.
"So what are you planning to do, bug it?" asked Keith.
"Something like that." replied Jahv.
Keith's eyes went wide. Sometimes, as interesting as he found Jahv, the alien made him a little nervous. For all his sophistication and technological know-how, Jahv was still a kid just like them, and even less learned in the ways of this particular world. Even electronically breaking into a huge facility like Arecibo seemed like asking for trouble.
"That's not gonna get you caught, is it?" asked Keith. None of them liked thinking about what might happen if Jahv's existence were ever discovered by grown-ups. Even the most understanding of their parents would have trouble with something like this.
"No." replied Jahv. "I'm just putting myself on the same reception frequency."
Moments later, streams of static burst forth from the computer's speaker.
"So much for that idea." remarked Keith.
"Actually, I think those are broadcasts from my homeworld!" said Jahv, amazed.
"What?" said Keith. "That was nothing but noise."
Davy was grinning. "You've never heard Jahv speak in his native language, have you?"
"What's that got to do with it?" asked Keith.