The alien spaceship continued to lower itself to Calvin's home state.

Earl was onboard, watching over the alien crew, making sure they didn't mess up or start fighting over jobs. Earl has to do that a lot.

"Have you located the Earth Potentate's house?" Earl asked.

"Uh huh." Lenny said. "It's right there. Next to that house. And that house. And that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and that..."

"Where is he!" Earl demanded.

"He's in his bedroom." Lenny said.

"Good. A perfect target. Keep the ship in the clouds until nightfall."

"What are clouds?" Dave asked.

Earl's eyes slammed shut.

"Keep the ship hidden in those white puffy things until the night comes." He said, through gritted teeth.

"Oh, OK."

Alex and Dave steered the ship towards some clouds.

At that very moment, Rupert came into the room.

"Earl?" He asked.

"Yes, sir?" Earl asked.

"The ship is being steered towards the sugar factory behind town. Were you aware of that?"

Earl swatted Alex and Dave out of the way, and steered the ship into the clouds.

"Calvin where are you going?" Mom asked, as Calvin walked towards the door.

"I have to go to the town." Calvin said. "I don't have any crystals for the lens on my new invention."

"Did you clean your room, like I asked you to?"

"Mom!" Calvin said, impatiently. "That's why I'm going into town! If I complete my shrink ray, then I won't have clean my room!"

Mom's eyes squeezed shut.

The next thing Calvin knew, he was sitting in the middle of a mess of papers, comic books, toys, and tuna cans.

Calvin muttered and grumbled.

"By golly!" He yelled. "If my Mega-Shrinker 5000 blows the house up, because Mom was too tight with her money to buy me some lens, then it'll be her fault!"

"Mm." Hobbes said, laying on his belly on the bed, and drawing in a notebook.

Calvin trudged through the mess, until he reached his toy chest.

He rooted through the toys, and finally pulled the microphone out of the jumble of whatnots.

Calvin took the plug, and plugged it into a headphone jack in his CD player. He hit the ON button. The neck shot outward, and the end started glowing red.

Calvin grinned, mischievously.

He pointed the shrinker at a pile of papers and comic books on his desk.

ZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

There was a blast of red light, and the mess on the desk vanished.

Hobbes' head came up.

Calvin then pointed the Shrink Ray at the sea of junk.

ZEEEAP!

Papers went flying in the air as Calvin waved the shrinker from side to side, and lasered everything on the floor, shrinking it to unseeable sizes.

Once the floor was visible, again, Calvin started shrinking stuff on the bed.

Hobbes dove from the way, as Calvin shrunk three comic books, four toy trucks, a box of band aids, and plate with sandwich crumbs on it.

Finally, Calvin pointed the shrinker at the window, and shrunk all the smashed flies.

Calvin blew blue smoke off the tip of the shrinker.

Hobbes peeked out from under the bed.

"Is it safe to come out?" He asked.

"Yep." Calvin said, proudly.

Hobbes stepped out.

"Well, Hobbes!" Calvin grinned. "This is great! With this Shrink Ray, I can instantly clean my room!"

"Yeah but it's not clean." Hobbes said. "It's just shrunk."

"It's the thought that counts, Hobbes." Calvin said, placing the Mega-Shrinker 5000 on his desk. "You can't see the jumble of things, therefore, following simple logic, the mess is what?"

"Uh..." Hobbes thought out loud. "shrunk?"

"No."

"Obscured?"

"No."

"Hidden?"

"No."

"Concealed?"

"No. It means that the mess is gone, Hobbes."

"Yeah, but it's not gone. It's been shrunk."

"I repeat, Hobbes," Calvin said, impatiently. "It's the thought that counts."

Calvin then spun away from Hobbes, and called, "MO-O-O-O-O-O-OM! MY STUPID ROOM IS CLEAN! CAN I GO OUTSIDE NOW!"

Mom came into the room.

"It didn't take you very long. Let's see how you did."

"I did WONDERFUL! I'm the master of cleaning rooms! Can I leave now?"

Mom studied the room.

"Your room looks pretty good." She said. "But did you clean out your closet?"

Mom reached for the closet.

Calvin's eyes bulged.

"I FORGOT THE CLOSET! NO WAIT! NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!"

FOOOOOOOOOM!

Mom, Calvin, and Hobbes were immediately buried under an avalanche of comic books, notebooks, toys, papers, chapter books, clothes, pillows, and blankets.

When everyone emerged from the flood, Mom turned a glare on Calvin.

"Back to work, kiddo."

"YOU MADE THIS MESS! YOU CLEAN IT UP!" Calvin screamed.

Mom left the room.

Calvin grumbled, and reloaded the shrinker.

ZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Instantly, everything was compacted down, once more.

Calvin muttered to himself, and put the shrinker back.

Calvin called Mom back into the room.

Mom couldn't find where Calvin had hidden all the stuff, so she let him go outside.

"HE'S ON THE MOVE!" Alex screamed.

Rupert looked up, and walked over to the radar screen.

The little dot marked CALVIN was moving, alright.

"He's heading to market!" Alex yelled. "He must be selling his cow for three beans!"

Rupert shoved Alex out of the way, and sat down.

"He's going into the Super Market." He said. He leaned over to the screen, and said, "security camera, force in."

The screen turned to static for a second.

"Visual." Rupert said.

The security camera in the store turned to the right, and focused on Calvin.

Calvin was walking casually down the isles, looking for crystals. And no, I don't know why the Super Market would be selling crystals.

Calvin didn't find what he was looking for. Instead of "crystals", he found "cake crystals", and decided that would have to do.

He walked up to the checkout stand, and placed the box on the conveyer belt.

The lady at the stand stared down at Calvin.

"Who are you?" He asked.

"Calvin." Calvin said.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty five and my voice hasn't changed yet." Calvin said.

"Uh huh." The lady said. "Where are your parents?"

"The car."

"Where do you live?"

"Sorry. Can't tell you that."

"Why not?"

"Classified information." Calvin said. "You need a ten thousand digit security code to get that knowledge."

Calvin grabbed the box of cake crystals, slapped the three dollars onto the counter, and left.

Calvin left the store, and started walking down the street.

"Odd." Rupert said. "Why would the Earth Potentate need that."

Earl had been sitting in a chair this whole time.

"Well, we can't go down there until tonight." He said.

"Well, I'm interesting in seeing why he got that food." Rupert said.

"Well." Earl said, standing up. "As scary as it may seem, we'll need to send one of the crew down there to check it out."

Rupert and Earl exchanged worried glances.

Earl turned to his crew.

"Men!" He called. "I have a very important mission. Who would like to volunteer?"

Nobody moved.

Earl grabbed an alien out of his chair.

It turned out being Erne.

"Erne, we have a big mission for you."

"Really?"

"Really. But before we send you off on this dangerous task. You must past a test."

"A test?"

"That's correct. A test." Earl said. "Erne? What's two plus two?"

Erne's eyes went blank.

"Uh, eleven."

"You'll do fine." Earl said. "Just go down to Earth, don't be seen, and see what the Earth Potentate is doing with cake crystals."

Erne did a salute.

"CAN DO, BOSS!"

He rushed out of the control room, hopping around, and being happy. and dumb.

Earl turned to Rupert.

"Do you think this will doom the mission, or not?"

Rupert stared after Erne as if contemplating that.

Erne rushed down the hallways, until he came to a room with jet packs hung up everywhere.

He grabbed one of them, spent fifteen minutes trying to get it on, then walked over to the door of the UFO.

He opened the door, looked around outside, then leaped off.

For a while, wind slapped Erne's face, as he held all tentacles outward.

After about a minute of falling, Erne flipped over, and pushed the button that would start the jet engines up.

Hmmm. The button didn't work.

Erne pushed it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

It was then that he became aware of a note on the pack that said, OUT OF ORDER.

Oops.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Screamed Erne, flinging his tentacles in all directions.

Suddenly the engines coughed and sputtered, and fire burst out.

Erne wasn't expecting this, and he went flying sideways.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Erne's jets propelled him around in spirals, zigzags, horizontal lines, vertical lines, and parallel lines. Leaving a smoke trail behind in his wake.

Erne bolted past Calvin about fifty feet into the air.

Calvin heard the screaming, and turned around. When he saw nothing, he continued his walk back home.

A fat man with a mustache was sitting in a lounge chair in the green grass of his yard.

He looked up, and saw a screaming alien attached to a jet pack spiraling across the sky.

"Mmm-hmmmm." The man said, looking away.

Soon, the jets sent Erne zooming for Calvin's school.

Erne grabbed hold of the flag post, and held on.

The jets started sending Erne flying around in circles around the pole.

However, Erne held on, and was able to finally gain control over the jet pack.

Erne wiped sweat from his brow, and flew off in the direction of Calvin's house.

Calvin entered his house, and walked up the stairs to his room.

"Alright, Hobbes." Calvin said, grabbing the Mega-Shrinker 5000. "I'm going up to the attic to put the finishing touches onto the shrinker."

"Uh huh."

"Don't wait up!"

Calvin walked out of the room, and closed the door.

Erne floated up to the window, and peeked inside.

He spotted Calvin walking up the stairs to the attic.

Erne watched Calvin, going from window to window, until he finally came to the attic window at the very top.

He peered inside as Calvin entered, and started sprinkling the cake crystals onto the top.

Erne fumbled with the video camera, almost dropped it, and started rolling.

The transmissions were sent up to Rupert's spaceship.

Rupert, Earl, and Earl's crew watched Calvin sprinkling the food onto the shrinker.

"What's he doing?" Earl asked.

"He's throwing food onto a microphone." Rupert said. "Being himself, in other words."

Suddenly Calvin picked the microphone up, plugged it into the headphone jack, and extended the neck out.

He pointed it at a box of old photo books, and pushed the button.

Rupert gasped. Earl's eyes popped open. Earl's crew... didn't do much of anything really. They didn't seem to being paying much attention to the video.

ZZEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

There was a flash of red light, and the box vanished into thin air!

Calvin flipped a switch, and pointed it at where the box used to be.

zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

There was another flash of red light and the box reappeared.

Rupert and Earl exchanged looks of total glee.

"HE HAS A SHRINK RAY!" They both screamed in unison.

Rupert and Earl began laughing, insanely.

Earl's crew joined in even though they didn't know what they were all laughing about. They just did it because they thought that it would look good in their record.

Rupert and Earl laughed.

Earl's crew laughed.

Oops.