Late that night, a familiar craft was slowly flying over the homes of those in Calvin's neighborhood. Unknown to the local residents, it was currently hovering in the exact center of town. It started to send little objects through windows of homes, using special beams to send them into jars of food, like peanut butter or cereal boxes, or even coffee mix. As soon as the deed was done, the craft slipped silently away into the night…

Calvin and Hobbes, both holding flashlights, wandered into the woods. They had left behind the campsite, unaware of what to do.

"What are we doing?" Hobbes whispered.

"We're going to figure out what's going on in the center of the island," Calvin replied.

"What for? I think it's sort of obvious that there are aliens."

Calvin rolled his eyes. He forged on through the brush.

"We're almost there," he said. "I can see the sign."

They bushed some branches aside and made their way into the clearing. They saw something familiar.

"The spaceship," Calvin whispered.

They ran up to it, but then Hobbes stopped.

"Wait a minute. Reality check, Calvin," he said. "Do we really want to go on board a dangerous space ship with lots of dangerous stuff that could possibly prove fatal?"

Calvin stopped and looked back at him. "You just hate finding adventure, don't you? Come on! Be a man! Let's get to it!"

Hobbes relented and they continued on to the ship.

"Oh, darn!" Hobbes said. "No way in. Let's go back now."

He turned to leave, but Calvin grabbed his tail.

"Everything has a way in, Hobbes," he said. "You just have to find it."

Calvin remembered that famous escalator that Galaxoid and Nebular always came down, so he started to climb up the long legs of the craft.

Hobbes groaned and followed.

Once they made it up there, Calvin spotted the opening. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crowbar. He pried on the doors as hard as he could until they finally opened. He scrambled inside. Hobbes jumped in after him.

"What do we do now?" Hobbes asked.

Calvin motioned him to follow. They walked down a long corridor. Calvin was really excited. It wasn't the first time he'd been a spaceship, but last time he had only been in the control room. This time, he wanted to explore the rest of it. They looked all around, but Hobbes had a feeling someone was watching him. He got inkling when he saw the video cameras that followed their movement.

"Calvin, those cameras are watching us," he whispered.

Calvin looked up and saw the mechanism on the lookout.

"This getting creepy," he said. "Let's get away from here."

He grabbed Hobbes' arm and they ran from the camera. Unfortunately, there were several more down the hall.

"What are we going to do?" Hobbes asked. "Everyone on board will know we're here."

Calvin looked around frantically. He spotted something: a chute!

He opened the door on it and peered down into the room they'd wind up in. It was safe.

"Quick! Down here!"

Hobbes leapt down the chute. Calvin followed.

They landed in a cart filled with cloth.

"That must've been a laundry chute," Hobbes said.

They looked all around. The room was filled with crates. Each one was marked with the words MUST BE SHIPPED BY TONIGHT.

Calvin ran to a crate before Hobbes could stop him. He yanked out the crowbar and started to rip the crate open.

"Calvin, if you open that, people will know we were in here!" Hobbes cried.

"So?"

Hobbes slapped his forehead and turned away.

"Hey, they're pills!" Calvin said.

Hobbes whirled around to look. He snatched a pack away from Calvin.

"They're labeled DR. GRIFFIN'S MIND CHANGING PILLS. GUARRANTEED TO REPAIR YOUR MIND JUST THEY I WANT IT."

"That's something you won't hear on Dr. Phil," Calvin said, putting the top back on the crate.

"Wait, shouldn't it say 'you' instead of 'I'?"

"Eh?"

"It should say that it's guaranteed to repair your mind the way you want it; not the way he wants it."

Calvin thought this over. "What do you suppose it means?"

"I don't know. Let's just get out of here."

Suddenly, they heard voices. They were somewhat distant.

"Where's that coming from?" Hobbes asked.

"Up there!" Calvin said, pointing at the air ducts.

Using the crates as a staircase, they ran up and climbed into the ducts.

They crawled for what felt like hours. They finally reached the end of the tunnel, and they found the way out.

Hobbes kicked the vent out, and they dropped to the floor. They noticed something very familiar about this place.

"We're back in the control room," Hobbes whispered.

Then they heard footsteps. They quickly ducked into a cupboard, where they waited.

A door opened, and they heard three pairs of footsteps.

"…and another thing," a voice was saying, "if you two don't start buckling down and getting this work done right, I don't know why I keep you around."

"But it was an accident," a second voice said.

"I don't care!" the first voice said again. "That was my best china!"

Calvin and Hobbes looked at each, trying to understand what this meant.

"Now then," said the first voice. "The boss says that by tomorrow, we need to activate the pills. The kid is on the island, so we need to command him to—"

"Um, boss?" asked another voice.

"What?"

"We tracked his pills, and he didn't take it."

"What? Well, what happened to the pills?"

"He put them in his parents' sandwiches."

They heard someone slap their forehead. "Oh, perfect. When the boss hears about this, he'll have a fit."

"Not necessarily," said a voice. A fourth voice. A voice that Calvin and Hobbes recognized.

RETRO!

"This could actually work to our advantage. Those pills will take the effect once they've entered someone's mouth. They go directly to the brain. That means that his parents have been affected by them. We can send them to do the dirty work, and no one will suspect anyone else, other than them."

They could hear clapping now.

Calvin and Hobbes had heard enough. They had to get out of here. Calvin pulled out a glowing box.

"What's they hypercube for?" asked Hobbes.

"Get in. I have an idea."

So Hobbes climbed into the hypercube. Calvin did too, but he left his feet sticking out. He slowly slipped out of cupboard so that he looked like a tiny box with red sneakers. He ran carefully across the floor unnoticed by everyone, and he made his way out the door.

"Okay, Hobbes," he said. "It's safe."

When they had both climbed out, they ran back to the door. They jumped out and slid down the long legs. They scrambled off into the woods, hoping to get back to the campsite and do something about Mom and Dad.

Back on the ship, Retro was sitting down at his new desk. He looked at the monitors on the wall nearby. They were all linked up to the security cameras in the halls. As he examined them, he noticed that there was something different about the shot of the main corridor: the shot was pointed at the laundry chute, rather than the main entrance.

He put his hand on the bottom of the little monitor and hit the rewind button. It took a few minutes, but he finally saw something. A familiar blonde boy was suddenly coming out of the laundry chute, and then a familiar stuffed tiger came up with him. Then the camera shot went back to the main entrance, following them down the hall.

He then looked at the one that watched over the shipping room, which is where the crates were. He rewound that one, and he could see Calvin coming out of the air ducts with the stuffed tiger, down the crates, standing around an open one… Wait, that one interested him. He zoomed in and saw Calvin holding a packet. He was reading the pill packet.

Retro sighed happily, which was odd, and he pressed an intercom button his desk. "Agent 1?"

"Yes, sir?" a reply came.

"I've decided to pull the deadline to now. Activate the pills now."

"What? But sir, not everyone has taken theirs yet."

"It will take effect when it is put in the mouth. Don't worry about it."

"Sure thing, boss."

Retro sat down in his chair. Oh, to be evil…

The sun was rising in Calvin's neighborhood. Susie Derkins was just leaving her house to play on the sidewalk.

"It's a lovely day, isn't it, Mr. Bun?" she asked her toy rabbit. "Yes, the birds are singing, the sun is shining, the sky is blue…and Calvin isn't here. This is truly a great day."

Then Susie saw something strange coming from the window across the street. It was an eerie green glow.

"That was odd," she said.

She quickly ran across the street and looked into the window, but everything looked normal.

Then she noticed another familiar green glow coming from another house. Then another one.

"Something strange is going on around here," she said to Mr. Bun.

Then she spotted another glow coming from her own house. She ran back and ran inside.

"Mom?" she shouted. "Dad?"

Mr. and Mrs. Derkins weren't exactly looking very parental right then. Their eyes were nothing but green!

"What's going on?" Susie demanded.

Suddenly, they stood up and their arms reached for her.

Susie knew something was up, so she ran for her life, Mr. Bun tight in her grasp.

"This like one of Calvin's Show and Tells," she said to herself as she ran up to her room.

Once she was there, she looked out the window and saw what was going on below. People were coming out of their homes, arms outstretched and all set for something.

"What's going on?" she asked again.

She heard her brain-dead parents coming upstairs. She quickly locked the door and hid under the bed. She heard her door being smashed down. Her parents came to the bed and managed to push it away, revealing her to be under it.

"Mom! Dad! What are you doing?" she asked frantically.

There was no response. Mrs. Derkins held up a pill.

Susie was confused, but she ran anyway. She ran between their legs and hurried for her broken down door, only to find more people were trashing the house and coming towards her.

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" she hollered.

She looked all around. She was surrounded.

The green-eyed people closed in and shoved the pill into her mouth. Susie screamed, but then she got real quiet. Her eyes turned green.

The first phase of Retro's plan was complete.