17

They arrived in the future, and quickly found the alien. He wasn’t hiding. In fact, he seemed to be waiting for them.

The alien explained that when Pencil (“Green Pencil,” said Green Pencil. “Ah yes, ‘Green Pencil,’ said the alien, correcting himself.) … when Green Pencil and Eraser saw the Earth explode, that it was the ruler of Pencil-Vania that destroyed Earth, so now they had to go way back to 1945 to stop him, because 1946 was the year he had the idea so they had to get to him before he had the idea.

“But why did he want to destroy Earth?” Eraser asked.

“Good question,” said the alien. “It’s because his favourite soccer team didn’t win the World Pencil Case.”

“Oh,” Eraser said. Sometimes, it’s as simple as that.

“But even if we find the ruler of Pencil-Vania, how will we catch him?” said Eraser.

The alien gave Green Pencil a magic potion that would put the ruler of Pencil-Vania to sleep and a space ship that would bring them wherever they wanted to go, so they thanked him and went back in the time machine and went to 1945 and then told the spaceship to take them to the ruler of Pencil-Vania, and the space ship brought them to…