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nickname? The one my relatives had given me back on Alpar Nok, when I was what Huggies might call a toddler and my diapers were anything but snug or dry?
    “I’m impressed with your research, Agent Judge.”
    “It’s not research, Daniel. It’s memory.” He tapped his nose. “I helped your dad change you once when you were maybe two years old. You guys were living in Kansas at the time, remember?”
    I froze.
    Of course I remembered Kansas.
    Kansas is where my mother and father were murdered.

Chapter 10
    I WISH THAT I didn’t sometimes, but of course I remember everything about that cursed, unspeakably horrible night back in Kansas.
    I was three years old, playing in the basement of our home, building the Seven Wonders of the World out of Play-Doh. Yeah, this power-to-create-whatever-I-imagine thing kicked in way early, during my childhood development process.
    Upstairs, I heard a horribly deep and strangled voice.
    “The List! The List! Where is it?”
    That heinous creature known as The Prayer (still Number 1 on The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma) was upstairs attacking my parents. Later, the foul beast would come after me, and I will never forget what it looked like: a six-and-a-half-foot-tall praying mantis with a stalklike neck and stringy red dreadlocks hanging down between its antennae.
    Upstairs, I heard my mother sobbing, and my fatherpleading calmly: “Wait, hold on…. Lower the gun, my friend. I’ll get The List for you. I have it nearby.”
    “The List is
here
?” the deep voice boomed once again.
    “Yes,” said my father. “Now, if you’ll just lower the—”
    The next thing I heard was a string of deafening explosions.
Shooting.
I realized, in a flash of instantaneous knowledge, that the weapon being deployed was an Opus 24/24.
    Guess you understand now why I totally hate the fiendish things.
    I know the pain they can inflict, what they can destroy.
    My whole world.

Chapter 11
    I PRETENDED THAT I had a mild case of the sniffles brought on by an allergy to Georgia pine pollen and quickly swiped the back of my hand across my face. I didn’t want Special Agent Judge, or any of the other Fibbies, to see the tears welling up in my eyes.
    “What do you want from me?” I asked.
    “We need your help, Daniel. Like my guys told you, the IOU is a top secret covert unit operating within the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Our mission is to seek out and establish working relations with any and all friendly extraterrestrials residing in the United States of America.”
    “And the unfriendlies?” I asked, knowing there were a jillion more of those here on Earth than peace-loving planet-hoppers like me.
    “The unfriendlies,” said Judge, “we seek out and, whenever possible, terminate.”
    I gestured toward the agent who had been holding hisdouble-barreled vaporizer backward. “Really? How’s that been working out for you?”
    My question made Agent Judge wince.
    “Not very well, Daniel. Not without the expert assistance of Protectors such as your father, your mother, and, now, you.”
    “Look,” I said. “Why should I help you guys?”
    “Because Number 2 is planning something big. What it is exactly… well, frankly, we don’t know.”
    Because the IOU hadn’t been able to infiltrate the demon’s underground pep rally, like I had. I knew exactly what Number 2 had up his sleeve: the destruction of cities and towns all across the globe, coupled with the enslavement of the entire human population—all seven billion of ’em.
    Judge tugged a simple silver chain out from under his shirt.
    “I wanted to show you this, Daniel.”
    “What is it?” I asked. “A Saint Jude medal? Because Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes, and if you ask me…”
    I shut up when I saw what Agent Judge held in his hand.
    “Where’d you get that?” I asked.
    “Your father gave it to me.”
    It was a silver elephant pendant, an emblem of Alpar Nokian homeworld solidarity. My mother and father