Jim Smith - Future Ratboy and the Quest for the Missing Thingy

I’ve been here in the future for a while now, but I’m still not completely used to it. Like the other day for example. It was the forty-ninth of Socktober and me and the gang were strolling into town for a very important occasion.

‘Ahh, don’t you just love Socktober!’ smiled Splorg. ‘All the leaves on the trees turning into socks – nature truly is a wonderful thing!’

I looked up at the tree we were walking past and gasped. Hundreds of multicoloured socks were dangling from the ends of its branches like, erm . . . socks.

‘Sometimes I wonder if this whole being-in-the-future thing is all a weird dream!’ I said. ‘I mean – socks growing on trees? That’s just ridikeelous!’

‘NOT!’ squawked Not Bird, flying over my head and perching on a branch. The whole thing swayed and a sock fell off, landing on Twoface’s left face.

‘What’s so ridikeelous about it, Future RatLOSER?’ said Twoface out of one of his mouths. He peeled the sock off his head and threw it on the pavement outside Dr Smell’s perfume shop.

‘Yeah Future RatBUM, it’s just a plain old sock tree!’ he said out of his other mouth.

Twoface has been calling me names like that ever since I won the Shnozville Superhero of the Month award for helping an old granny cross a road.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, but the road was seventeen miles wide. And the granny was a ninety-four-year-old elephant. And I had to carry her. With one hand.

I think Twoface is just jealous because he reckons he’s a better superhero than me.

The door to Dr Smell’s perfume shop opened and Dr Smell stepped out. He sniffed the air then glanced down at the leaf sock Twoface had just thrown on the floor.

‘Hey, I only just swept that hover-pavement!’ he frowned. ‘Blooming socks everywhere,’ he said, picking the sock up and throwing it in a clear plastic hover-bin bag filled with eight trillion other leaf socks.

Jamjar pointed at the hover-bin bag and pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘One of the keel things about living here in the future,’ she said to me, ‘is that nobody has to buy socks any more!’

‘Amazekeels,’ I said, even though I didn’t have to buy socks when I lived in the olden days either, because my mum and dad always bought them for me.

‘Heading into town are you, gang?’ said Dr Smell, waggling his nostrils. ‘I can smell excitement in the air!’

That’s how good Dr Smell’s sense of smell is – he can even smell excitement.

Wheelie flapped his lid open and shut, and Dr Smell stuck two of his fingers up his nostrils to stop the bin stink floating up them.

‘OOH YES,’ bleeped Wheelie in his posh new computery voice, and I thought how weird it was that my normal old bin from home could now speak. ‘TODAY IS A MOST IMPORTANT DAY!’

‘What’s happening?’ asked Dr Smell, and Wheelie rolled the bits of his lid where his eyes would’ve been if he’d had eyes, because he couldn’t believe Dr Smell didn’t know.

‘WHY, IT’S MAYOR GOODHAIR’S BIRTHDAY, OF COURSE!’burped Wheelie.

Dr Smell knocked on his head like it was a front door.

‘Blistering bogazoids, I’d completely forgotten!’ he said. ‘Ratboy, isn’t YOUR birthday coming up soon too?’

‘Next week,’ I said.

‘NOT!’squawked Not Bird, even though my birthday really was next week.

‘Got anything planned?’ asked Dr Smell.

‘No,’ I mumbled, imagining my mum and dad and little sister back home in the olden days, hanging bunting and crossing their fingers I’d turn up again one day at their front door.

‘What, no party?’ said Dr Smell, and I shook my head.

Twoface’s two faces smiled to themselves. ‘Old RatNOSE here is scared his bday bash wouldn’t be as good as Mayor Goodhair’s,’ he sneered.

‘No I’m not,’ I said, and Not Bird squawked, ‘NOT!’

‘It’s true, the mayor’s parties are hard to beat,’ said Splorg. ‘Free food and drink for everybody – plus he’s unveiling a brand new statue of himself today at seven billion o’clock on the dot!

Dr Smell twitched his nose. ‘ANOTHER Mayor Goodhair statue?’ he said. ‘That’s the 57th one this year!’

‘You know Mayor Goodhair – he loves a statue of himself !’ chuckled Jamjar, and I put my hand up, like I was in school.

‘Erm, I don’t want to sound stupid or anything, but can anyone tell me who Mayor Goodhair is exactly?’ I asked.

‘Mayor Goodhair is the mayor of Shnozville,’ said Jamjar.

‘Obviouskeely,’ chuckled Twoface, and Not Bird did a sniggle.

Jamjar ignored Twoface. ‘You know how Mr X goes round town blowing things up and causing trouble?’ she said, and I nodded. ‘Well the mayor is sort of the opposite of that – he replaces hover-pavements when they’re broken and makes sure everything’s clean and tidy.’

‘And why is he called “Mayor GOODHAIR”? I asked.

Jamjar pointed across the road at a statue of a man with an extremely good head of hair. Underneath his head was a little brass plaque with writing on it.

I Future-Ratboy-zoomed my eyes in and read the words ‘Mayor Goodhair’.