Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce Page A

your little princess now,” she said. “And I hope together we can end global warming and poverty and stuff.”
    It looked wobbly but convincing on the big screen. I said, “What exactly are you accepting?”
    “An award.”
    “For what?”
    “For being famous.”
    I went to get a drink out of the fridge and found some little bottles of water shaped like rockets, with fins and a pointy bit at the top. They were perfect weapons for a water fight. I stuffed three in each pocket, tiptoed back to the living room and squirted Florida. She shrieked and ran after me. I threw her a bottle just to make it fair and we had this excellent water fight all over the house. I hid behind the couch, hoping to ambush her. I must’ve fallen asleep there, because the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing.
    “This is your alarm call,” it said. “Please join your party in the car park of the Possibility Building at eight a.m.”
    I picked my way through the discarded ice-cream buckets and over the soaking wet floors and eventually foundFlorida curled up asleep in the cupboard with the cleaning stuff. I woke her up (she wasn’t happy) and went to get changed.
    I emptied my bag onto my bed so that I could sort everything out. There were some Warcraft notes, and an unexpected envelope, which turned out to contain a photograph of me, Mom and Dad on my First Communion day—Mom must have sneaked it in there. Dad’s broken St. Christopher statue was at the bottom of the bag too. He must’ve sneaked that in too. He’d obviously been worried about me going to the Lake District on my own. I’ve brought it with me into space. It’s standing on top of the multifunctional display, just like it used to stand on the dashboard of his taxi. If my dad could see it now, he’d be really worried.

Thrill Ride of the Century
    This part of space seems to be a communications dead zone. I can’t get any signal on my phone. Maybe we’re on the wrong side of the satellites. I’m going through old messages in my in-box for company. I’ve still got the last one Dr. Drax sent: “Tk care of u-self & children. C u in 10 hrs.” That was about twenty-four hours ago. Not only have I not seen Dr. Drax, I haven’t seen her planet.
    I’ve also still got the first one. It says: “Welcum 2 Infinity Park. B @ Poss Blding car park @ 8. Courtesy car in drive. Use phone to open car. Drv safely.”
     
    Courtesy car!
    “What’s a courtesy car?” said Florida.
    “Well, it’s a car that they lend you and you can use it as much as you like.”
    “You mean a car for you to drive? Oh no, no, no, no, no,no, no! Not after last time,” said Florida. Then she said, “What kind of car is it? Is it another limo?”
    “Let’s go and see.”
    It was a little greeny Toyota-y thing. It looked like a big toy really. I put my hand out to touch it.
    “Liam…,” said Florida. “We can’t.”
    “No, we can’t. You’re right. Except…”
    “Except what?”
    “Except I am supposed to be a taxi driver.”
    “Oh.”
    “So I’ve got to pretend I can drive.”
    “Liam, you can only pretend you can drive in a pretend car. In a real car, you have a real accident and get us really killed.”
    “It doesn’t look that dangerous. I mean, it looks a lot less dangerous than the Porsche did. The text said you open it with your phone.”
    I pointed the phone at it and the headlights blinked and all the doors popped open. Then a robot-y voice from the dashboard said, “Climb aboard, Liam Digby.” You have to admit this was interesting. You can’t really blame us for getting inside the car. It would’ve been rude not to.
    As soon as we were in the seats, the car spoke again. “Hi, Liam, hi, Florida,” it said. “This drive should take fifteenminutes. Don’t forget to fasten your seat belts.” And, without us doing anything, the engine started up. A nice, gentle little engine. It sounded so reassuring. It sounded like it trusted us. We fastened our seat