Excerpt
. . . He was just deciding that he was more miserable than he’d ever been in his entire life, when he heard a peculiar scratching noise coming from under his bed.
Noah peered over the edge of his mattress just as there emerged a mouse with rather luxurious whiskers. He was walking upright on his hind legs, and looking around with a slightly maniacal smile. A pair of old-fashioned round spectacles perched on the end of his nose and around his neck he wore a yellow silk bow tie. But the most remarkable thing about the mouse was the long dark green frockcoat he wore. It was covered in at least two-dozen bulging pockets.
Noah squinted and peered closer. What on earth was poking out of those pockets? He could just about make out what appeared to be miniature test-tubes, pencils, and oddly-shaped tools. The biggest pockets held a telescope, a computer tablet, and a cheese baguette.
“Wow!” gasped Noah.
The mouse turned to face him, his smile growing wider and, if anything, more maniacal. “I think the proper terminology is ‘How do you do?’” he said. For someone so small, he had a remarkably powerful voice.
Noah sat back, speechless. A mouse had just spoken to him. A mouse.
The mouse bowed elaborately, circling his arm several times. “Allow me to introduce myself. Marmaduke Mouse, Scientist and Inventor, at your service. Although to be accurate, you are to be at my service.” He paused meaningfully. “I come from Mouseland, down below.” He pointed under the bed.
Noah desperately tried to get some words out of his mouth, but his throat felt like he had just swallowed a furry gorilla. The mouse called Marmaduke examined him over his glasses. “Yes, hmmm, the Sidekick Selector 2000 has done a spiffing job. I must congratulate myself. Alert face, good mind, adventurous glint in his eye. By cheddar, he’s just what is needed!”
“Just what is needed …for what?” Noah managed to squeak out.
“Aha! The boy speaks in sentences!” said the mouse gleefully, doing a little skip and a hop. “Let me explain. Due to, ahem, unforeseen circumstances, I am compelled to find a sidekick, an ‘assistant’ if you prefer, who is not a mouse. My latest invention, the Sidekick Selector 2000, has chosen you. You are to come down with me to Mouseland at once.”
Noah weighed up the situation. An upright walking, talking mouse had just used some weird invention to choose him as a sidekick. And now the mouse was asking him to go to a place called Mouseland, which, apparently, was under his bed.
“Am I dreaming?” Noah asked himself. He pulled his foot towards his nose, to see how many toes he could fit into a nostril. He could tell he was awake because he could only fit one toe. Ouch. Definitely awake. The mouse, Marmaduke, was still standing beside his bed, gazing up expectantly, twirling a whisker around one claw. Noah removed the toe from his nose.
“I hate to be rude,” Noah said slowly and carefully. “But I’m not really sure how this is going to work. I mean, how can I be your sidekick? I’m about 100 times bigger than you!”
“Actually, if we go by weight, rounded up to the second decimal, you are about 1631.57 times bigger than me,” said Marmaduke. “However, if we consider mental capacity, how much information we can fit in our heads, you will find that my brain is much, much bigger than yours. Indeed, my brain is so capacious that, scientifically, I am 7000 years in advance of any human.”
Noah went silent again. His useless human mind was teeming with so many questions it was hard to know what to say first. He stuck his toe up his nose again, just to make doubly sure he really was awake. Ouch.
“Anyway, size is irrelevant,” Marmaduke continued brightly. “At the atomic level, you’re mostly empty space: just millions of little electrons buzzing around millions of nucleuses in vast emptiness.” He spun around a few times to demonstrate the buzzing electrons. “Besides, I have a Shrinkifier,” he added, nodding mysteriously.
“A what!?” said Noah.
“A Shrinkifier. We’re just going to give your atoms a little squeeze.”
“Uh, do I have any say in this?” said Noah.
“Nothing to worry about, Old Cheese. You won’t feel a thing. Flick of a switch and every cell in your body will reduce to 1/1631.57th of its size. Here!” He pulled a mouse-sized green watch out of one of his many pockets and tossed it to Noah. “Push that button, there on the side.”
It was too small for Noah to see the watch face clearly, but he cautiously pushed it on one side. Almost instantly, it grew until it was exactly the right size for his wrist. Noah could see it wasn’t a watch after all: where the time should have been there was just a switch.
By now, Marmaduke was literally hopping with excitement. “I just love trying out new inventions!” he said as he leapt and pirouetted ridiculously across Noah’s bedroom floor. “Get out of bed and flick that switch, Old Cheese! Come on! Tally ho! Chop chop! Time for adventure!”
