My Teacher Fried My Brains

by Bruce Coville

  But what if when the experiment was over she decided to take the smartness back? That was the most frightening idea of all. I didn’t think I could stand going back to being what I used to be.

  The second thing bothering me was the way the other kids were acting. No one knew what to think about me anymore. The only one who didn’t treat me like a complete freak was Susan.

  My third problem was that I was getting so smart that I didn’t know what to do about it. If a kid like me, or like I had been, suddenly announced that he had figured out how to create world peace, would you pay any attention to him? More important, would the President and Congress? But that was exactly the situation I found myself in.

  When I described a brilliant plan to end world hunger, my social studies teacher said it was silly.

  The next day I figured out cold fusion—only I didn’t dare tell that to my science teacher, since I didn’t want her to know I had been tampering with her brain zapper.

  But can you imagine how frustrating it was? Think about it. Wrapped inside my magnificent brain was information that would have solved every one of earth’s energy problems, eliminated most of our pollution problems, and made me a billionaire in the process. And there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it!

  I tried. I even sent a letter to the Department of Energy telling them I would give them the information. They sent back a very polite note letting me know in the nicest possible terms that they thought I was an idiot.

  That was one more thing I learned once I got smart: no one wants to listen to a kid with an idea. Sometimes I thought I could understand why old Peter had decided to go with Broxholm that night.

  Even so, I was feeling pretty good about myself, and about what had happened—until the night that I went to bed and couldn’t get to sleep because of the radio.

  At least, I thought it was the radio.

  “Come on, Patrick,” I said. “Turn it off so I can go to sleep.”

  “Turn what off?”

  “Your radio!”

  “My radio is broken, Duncan Dootbrain, so shut up and leave me alone.”

  I blinked. Patrick was telling the truth. I remembered hearing him complain to my mother the day before about his radio being broken.

  So where was the music coming from?

  I rolled over, and the station changed. Instead of Madonna, I was getting a blast of Beethoven. I rolled back, and Madonna’s voice came back on.

  Or maybe I should say back in. Because what I had figured out was this: the music was inside my head.

  Most people have five senses. Suddenly I had six. I had fried my brain one time too many, and turned it into a radio receiver.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Invisible Information

  I didn’t get much sleep that night. Every time I moved my head I got a different kind of music playing inside it.

  Finally I found a station that played truly boring elevator music that should have put me to sleep almost instantly. It probably would have, if I hadn’t been so terrified about what I had done to myself.

  Lying in bed while elevator music plays endlessly in your head and you sweat with fear about what you’ve done to yourself—that’s about as bad as life can get.

  At least, that was what I thought at the time. The next day I realized that I was wrong.

  I had forgotten about TV.

  It started shortly after home economics class, when I closed my eyes and found myself watching a rerun of The Donna Reed Show.

  You might think having a TV receiver in your brain sounds like fun. Believe me, it’s not. For one thing, I couldn’t turn it off. The shows were always there. If you think about how smart I had become, and how stupid most television is, you’ll see how painful this was for me.

  I had read enough by this time to guess what was going on. To understand, you have to start by realizing that the air around us is filled with invisible information. That may seem weird, but it’s true. Think about it for a moment. Whenever you smell something, you’re pulling information out of the air. When you hear something, you’re pulling information out of the air. What are you smelling? What are you hearing? You may be able to see the object, but you can’t see the smell itself; it travels to you in the form of incredibly tiny molecules. The sound comes to you in waves of vibrations moving through the air.

  Invisible information.

  The thing is, we know how to interpret that information. Our noses and our ears take the molecules or the sound waves and translate them so that we can say, “Ah, rotting fish” or “squealing tires.”

  Now, we know that we don’t take in all the information around us. For example, our noses aren’t built to process smells the way a bloodhound’s can. When a bloodhound tracks someone down by following their smell it’s using invisible information we could use, too, if only we could perceive it.

  Now think about your radio. You turn it on, and you get instant music. (Or news, or idiotic disk jockey chatter, or whatever.) Where is the music coming from? Inside the radio? That would be true if you were playing a tape or a compact disc. But when you turn on the radio, it pulls the music out of the air.

  The music was there all along; you just couldn’t get at it.

  The same is true for the TV set. You turn it on, and bang! sound and pictures both. And where are they coming from? Unless you’re playing your VCR, they’re coming from radio waves that the television pulls out of the air.

  Those same kind of waves are passing through your head all the time. Right now, even as you read these words, an incredible amount of information is passing right through your skull. Broadcast waves from four or five television stations. A dozen kinds of music. News reports, police calls, CB radio chatter—they’re all passing through your brain right now! If you could perceive them, if your brain could interpret them the same way it does sights and sounds and smells, then you could pull that information right out of the air. It’s there; your brain just doesn’t know how to find it.

  My ultra-powerful brain had learned how to receive that information.

  The problem was, I couldn’t turn it off.

  What made things worse was that I couldn’t sort it out. The images all blurred together. When I closed my eyes I might hear two or three radio stations while I watched Scooby Doo chase Pee-wee Herman across the bridge of the starship Enterprise.

  I figured another day or two of this and I would go mad. As it was, I couldn’t think. The reputation I had started to get for being smart was going to dissolve pretty fast. People had spent years thinking of me as stupid and a couple of weeks thinking of me as smart. If it all ended now, they would figure the smart thing had been just a mistake. It wouldn’t take long for them to forget it altogether.

  I had had my temper under control for the last several days. But with all this going on in my head, with the constant noise and confusion and my own terror at what I had done to myself, I wasn’t able to control things as well. So that afternoon, when Mr. Black asked me the kind of question I should have been able to answer in a flash, I couldn’t come near the solution.

  “Come, come, Duncan,” he said. “Pay attention. You know what this is all about.”

  “How do you know what I know?” I shouted. “Until two weeks ago you thought I was I total jerk.”

  Mr. Black was so surprised he dropped his chalk. It shattered into a dozen pieces.

  I closed my eyes, waiting for him to tell me to go see the Mancatcher.

  To my surprise, he said, “Are you feeling all right, Duncan? Would you like to see the nurse?”

  I blinked. There was something important going on here. But between the fact that my head was picking up The Dating Game and a violin concerto by Mozart, I couldn’t quite figure it out.

  “Duncan, I asked if you want to see the nurse.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t think the nurse could help. An electrician might do me some good, if he or she could install an on/off switch and a volume knob somewhere on the back of my neck.r />
  “I’ll be all right,” I muttered, which was the first lie I had told in several days. “Sorry I yelled.”

  Mr. Black shrugged. “Sometimes these things happen.”

  I lost my temper again that night at home, when Patrick said, “Hey, Duncan, how come you don’t have your nose stuck in a book tonight? Decide to get normal for a while?”

  I told him to shut up. He hit me in the head.

  I announced that I had had enough of him, and I was going to run away from home. I didn’t mean it, of course. But when things get this way, sometimes you say things you don’t mean.

  I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since this started. That night, when I lay down in bed and closed my eyes, I saw Humphrey Bogart kissing John Wayne’s horse while Ed McMahon was trying to sell dog food to Attila the Hun. In the background I was getting a mixture of Lawrence Welk and a rap group called Stinking Pond Scum.

  I thought I was going to scream.

  Then it all disappeared.

  “Duncan,” said a voice in my head. “Duncan, can you hear me?”

  It was Peter Thompson!

  “I can hear you,” I whispered.

  “Duncan,” he repeated. “Can you hear me?”

  He sounded desperate.

  “Where are you?” I whispered. But he was gone. The radio and the TV programs came pouring back into my head.

  I wondered if I was losing my mind. I had to talk to someone. I wished I could call Susan. But it was too late; her family would be asleep, and her parents would never put her on the line at that hour.

  I got up and wrote her a note: “Susan, I have to talk to you. This is urgent! I am sorry about the National Sun article and everything else. Please, please talk to me today after school. Duncan.”

  The next morning I stuffed the note in her locker.

  That day was the worst yet. I couldn’t concentrate at all. I broke a bowl in home economics, and then yelled at Miss Karpou when she tried to ask if I was all right. I felt terrible.

  I felt even worse when I found out that Susan was home sick that day. Now what was I going to do? I had to talk to someone.

  Finally I asked Miss Karpou if I could see her after school. I didn’t really think she could help me; she was too ditzy. But she might be able to think of someone who could help me. And I had a feeling that at least she would believe me.

  After the last bell I went to Miss Karpou’s room. She was fiddling around with something in the test kitchen when I got there. That was fine; that area was really private, and I didn’t want anyone to overhear us. Especially not Andromeda Jones.

  Miss Karpou looked up when she heard me come in. “Hello, Duncan,” she called cheerfully. “Come on back.”

  I closed the door and walked back to where she was working, trying to shut out the whining violin music that was running through my head.

  “I’m sorry about yelling this morning,” I said once I was standing next to her.

  Miss Karpou shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, Duncan. I didn’t take it personally.”

  I tried to smile. If only the violins would shut up!

  “Miss Karpou,” I said, trying not to cry, “I have to talk to someone. I have to tell someone what’s happening to me. Only it’s so unbelievable, I’m afraid you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll believe you, Duncan. I promise.”

  Then she pointed her wooden spoon at me and twisted the handle. My body seemed to lock in place.

  How could I have been so stupid? I thought.

  Frozen not with fear, but by some alien technology, I watched in horror as ditzy little Betty Lou Karpou grabbed her chin and began to peel off her face.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  No Secrets

  Miss Karpou’s real face didn’t look anything like Broxholm’s. Her skin was a soft green-gold color—about the shade of willow trees in spring. It was also covered with scales. She had three eyes, with the one in the middle being located above the other two, sort of in the center of her forehead. It was the biggest of the three. I didn’t realize about the third eye right away, since it was hidden under a protective patch.

  “Ah, that feels better,” she said as she pulled the patch away. The third eye opened. Its purple pupil was vertical, like a cat’s. When it focused on me I wanted to shout. I wanted to run. I wanted to faint.

  But I just stood there, frozen and forced to watch.

  The strangest part was yet to come, for once Miss Karpou had removed the patch from her eye, she pulled something that was a little like a hair clip away from her nose.

  “Ohhhh,” she sighed, as her nose rolled down, “and isn’t that a relief.”

  I could see where it would be, if you had a nose like hers. It looked like it belonged to a little green elephant. Only Miss Karpou’s nose was flatter than an elephant’s. Also, it had three prongs (or fingers, or something) on the end. When it was resting it dangled down to cover her mouth. But it wasn’t resting very often. Mostly it was waving around in front of her, like some sort of snake with a mind of its own.

  “Oh, Duncan, you can’t imagine how good it feels to really let my hair down,” she said as she pulled off a thing that had covered her head like a shower cap.

  “Let my hair down” was the wrong phrase, since most of it stood straight up as soon as she pulled off the cap. I don’t know if it really qualified as hair. It was lavender, and thick as worms. Like her nose, it seemed to move on its own, each thick strand going its own way, curling, uncurling, bending from side to side.

  Watching it gave me the willies. Unfortunately, I couldn’t close my eyes.

  “One last thing, and then we can talk,” she said. “Or at least, I can talk. You’ll just have to listen for a while.”

  She turned to the refrigerator and pulled out a familiar-looking piece of Tupperware. Lifting off the top, she said, “You can come out now, Poot.”

  She turned the container on its side. The glowing slug-thing oozed over the edge and onto the counter.

  I figured this was either good news or bad news. If this was the same slug I had first met, it was good news, because I was glad it was still alive. If it was just an after-school snack for Miss Karpou, that was bad news, because I really didn’t want to watch her eat the thing.

  After a few seconds she put her hand on the counter. The thing began to ooze its way up her arm. I figured that unless she ate with her armpit, this was a good sign.

  “Well, now that I’m comfortable, let’s see what we can do about you,” said the alien.

  She started to walk in my direction. I wanted to scream and run, but I was still frozen. I couldn’t even make my eyes go wide in horror, though they were trying for all they were worth.

  The alien touched me on the forehead with her wooden spoon. Then she pushed until I fell backward. I had a moment of total terror, almost worse than when she had started to take off her mask. Maybe falling backward is some basic fear built into our genes. It sure felt that way.

  But I didn’t fall very far, because my forehead was still connected to her wooden spoon. She made a couple of adjustments to the spoon, and soon my body was stretched out flat in the air, three feet above the floor. When she lifted the spoon I came with it, as if I weighed no more than a balloon.

  Using the spoon, Miss Karpou put me on the countertop. Then she bent down and looked me in the face. The slug oozed along her arm, as if it wanted to get a closer look, too.

  It was bad enough to have the alien’s three eyes staring into my two. But when her nose started examining me as well, poking and prodding around my face as if it was gathering information for its own purposes, I really, really wanted to scream—especially when one of those green feelers on the end of the alien’s trunk poked its way into my right nostril.

  “Had a rough week, Duncan?” asked the alien in a voice that actually sounded sympathetic.

  What was I supposed to do? Nod and smile at her? I did the only thing I could do,
which was lie there and stare straight up with wide eyes.

  If only the violins inside my head would shut up so that I could think!

  “Poor Duncan,” said Miss Karpou. “Let’s see if we can’t improve your situation a little.”

  She went to the cupboard where we kept the mixing bowls. Stretching her arm, she took one down from the top shelf. When I say stretching her arm, I don’t mean like you or I would stretch. Her arm actually got longer, as if it were made of rubber or something.

  The mixing bowl looked like the bowls we used almost every day in class. But it must have been filled with some kind of alien circuitry, because when she sat it on edge on the counter and then slid my head inside, it blocked out the radio reception.

  What bliss! For the first time in days I had silence inside my head. That was such a relief I could have kissed that hideous alien face.

  “My face is not considered hideous where I come from,” said Miss Karpou. “And I would not want a kiss from you anyway.”

  I would have blinked in surprise if I could have. (Actually, I would have jumped off the counter and run like hell if I could have, but that wasn’t even a possibility.) Had she just read my mind?

  “Yes,” said Miss Karpou.

  She had read my mind!

  “It’s not quite mind reading,” she said quietly. “The circuits in the mixing bowl are not only blocking the radio and television waves coming into your brain, they are amplifying and sorting the waves that you create within. Sorting is the big problem, of course, since your brain is doing a multitude of things at once. The task for the machine is to choose the brain patterns that are relevant, sort them into some sort of order, magnify them, and transmit them to the receiver plugged into my head. It’s like mind reading, but it’s all done with machines.”