“Torture chambers,” said Rex, “definitely torture chambers.”
Daisy’s eyes widened in horror. “Why would they want to torture us?” she asked.
“That’s how they get you to learn. Nothing makes you remember your times tables faster than the threat of having your fingernails ripped out slowly,” he said, holding his hand up to Daisy’s face and pretending to rip out his thumbnail.
“That is highly unlikely,” said Philip matter-of-factly. “Fear reduces performance. Fact.”
“He’s winding you up,” said Lexi, pushing Rex’s hand away from Daisy.
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you when you hear the sound of the drill start up,” said Rex.
“Far more likely to be a computer-based teaching program,” continued Philip, ignoring Rex. “I read about it in this month’s Science Review.”
“Science Review? I’m sorry, how old are you?” asked Rex.
“Old enough to know my times tables,” replied Philip, and the others sniggered.
“Get a life, Einstein,” said Rex.
“I guess we’ll find out in a moment,” said Chris, spotting Sir Bentley looking over at them from the entrance to the classroom wing. Daisy stood up and smoothed out her dress, and they all walked down and followed Sir Bentley into the classroom.
Chris walked in last and took the blue seat at the front by the door, and Sir Bentley made his way over to the whiteboard. He cleared his throat and began.
“As you all know, my name is Bentley Jones, and I am headmaster of Myers Holt. This is in addition to my role as director general of MI5, which some of you may have heard of.”
“MI5? So you’re a spy?” asked Philip incredulously.
“No, not a spy, though I do have spies that work for me. Ultimately, my job is to protect the United Kingdom from threats on our shores. As you can imagine, this is an extremely difficult job, but for the most part we’re very successful at keeping Britain safe. However, from time to time, situations arise that are beyond even our usual resources, and we have to be creative in ways to tackle them. Myers Holt, the home of MI18, is one of those ways.”
“There’s no such thing as MI18,” said Philip matter-of-factly.
“There’s no such thing as MI18 on paper, Philip, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. MI18 was formed during World War Two as a top-secret agency that employed children to help them with their intelligence efforts.”
The children all looked at each other in confusion.
“The reason we have picked the six of you is that you all have particular talents that can help us. And by ‘us’ I mean the United Kingdom. Myers Holt was established to help nurture those talents and use them in ways that will be of great good, and in return you will learn more than you could from a lifetime of schooling. I think, perhaps, the best way to explain is to give you a demonstration. First, do any of you speak Swahili?”
The children all shook their heads.
“Good,” he said, and picked up a stack of books on his table. He handed one to each child.
Chris looked at the cover of the book. A Beginner’s Guide to Swahili. He opened up the book to a page in the middle, on a section about emergencies. Phrases in Swahili were followed by their translation in English. He stopped at one of the English sentences and read.
Please could you call an ambulance. My friend requires immediate medical attention.
“I’d like you all to close your books and listen to me carefully,” said Sir Bentley. Chris put the book down and looked up.
“When I ask you to begin, I want you to open the book up to the first page. I don’t want you to read it, or even to try to understand or remember what you are looking at. All I want you to do is to look at the page—a quick glance will do—and then move on to the next page. There are”—he picked up the book on his desk and turned to the back page—“one hundred eighty-five pages in this book. That should take you about five minutes to glance through. Right, off you go.”
Chris opened up the book and did exactly as instructed, glancing briefly at each page, then turning to the next. He tried to concentrate, but his mind kept wandering, trying to work out what the point of the exercise was. He reached the end and closed the book, just as the others did the same.
“Good,” said Sir Bentley. “Lexi. Please translate the following into Swahili.” He picked up the book and let it fall open. “‘There is a fire in the garden.’”
“Uh, I don’t speak Swahili,” said Lexi, flustered.
“Actually, you do. Don’t think about it; just say it.”
“Um. Kuna moto bustani pale.” The children looked at Lexi in amazement. Lexi looked around to see who had said that, as if she couldn’t believe that those words had come out of her own mouth.
“Excellent and absolutely correct, as you can see if you turn to page thirty-two.”
“What? That’s impossible. Or a fix,” said Rex, looking annoyed.
“Entirely possible, Rex. Perhaps you could do the next one: ‘Where is the nearest police station?’ ”
Rex opened his mouth, but instead of delivering the sentence in nonsense words, as he had intended to do, he answered in perfect Swahili.
“Kituo cha polisi kipo wapi?” His eyes widened in surprise.
“Now Chris,” said Sir Bentley, and Chris sat up straight. “‘I want to go to the cinema tonight.’”
Chris hesitated.
“Again, don’t think; just speak. Your brain will do the work without you realizing.”
Chris tried again.
“Nataka kwenda sinema leo usiku.”
Chris couldn’t believe it and felt complete confusion. He had spent three years learning French and could barely remember the numbers to ten.
Sir Bentley repeated the task with Daisy, Sebastian, and finally Philip, who were all left with the same shocked expression on their faces.
Sir Bentley gathered up the books and put them back on his desk.
“Does anyone know what percentage of our brain, on average, human beings use?”
Philip put up his hand immediately.
“Ten percent,” he answered.
“Exactly right. However, during World War Two, a man named Walter Vander stumbled onto something through sheer chance. He discovered that children, beginning on the day that they turn twelve—the transitional year from child to young adult—are able to use their brains to their full capacity. This lasts until the last day of your twelfth year and then stops as suddenly as it started. During this time, if you know how, it is possible to learn the most incredible skills, which are as powerful as they are, unfortunately, short-lived. We call this power the Ability, and it is the reason that you are all here today.”
Sir Bentley paused to let the information sink in. Finally, Chris put up his hand, looking as confused at the other children in the room.
“Yes, Christopher?”
“So, you’re telling us that we have this Ability, that’s why we’re here?”
“Actually, all children have it at the age of twelve, to varying degrees. The reason that we asked the six of you in particular to come here is because you have all recently turned twelve and, although every child we tested can be trained to use the Ability, some have more of a natural talent. That is what the test you took was designed to show us.” Sir Bentley walked round to the back of his desk, opened a drawer, and took out a remote control. He pressed a button, and a screen came down from the ceiling in front of the whiteboard. He pressed another button, and the screens on the windows turned off, leaving the room pitch-black. They heard a click, and the screen in front of them lit up with the image of a boy underneath a Christmas tree, the same photograph that Miss Sonata had shown Chris back at his house.
“You’ll all remember this, I’m sure,” said Sir Bentley, “but here is a picture that you won’t have seen before.”
He pressed a button on the remote, and the photograph was replaced with another similar one, but in this one the present had
been opened and the boy was holding a stuffed penguin with a yellow bow tie and a top hat.
“This photograph was stuck behind the one that you were looking at. Without realizing it, you were all able to see past it using your Ability and reveal what the little boy was holding.”
Lexi gasped loudly as Chris’s jaw dropped open in amazement.
Sir Bentley turned back to face the screen. He pressed the button, and this time a photograph of a street scene appeared. Chris immediately recognized the steps leading up to the church, and, looking at the bottom of the screen, he saw the same red numbers spray-painted onto the pavement that he had read out to Miss Sonata.
“This question tested your Ability to use remote viewing. Has anybody ever heard of remote viewing?”
Philip put up his hand.
“Surprise, surprise, Einstein knows the answer,” said Rex.
Sir Bentley shot Rex a disapproving glance. “Yes, Philip?”
“It’s when you use the power of your mind to view distant places using a picture or coordinates.”
“Exactly right, couldn’t have explained it better myself. In this case you all looked at the map and were able to see the location as it was at exactly that moment and imagined yourself walking around it. The stronger your Ability in this area, the closer you would have landed to the numbers on the pavement. As I’m sure you understand, this is a fantastically useful tool in gathering information by, for example, viewing confidential files in a locked cabinet.
“Finally, Miss Sonata asked you all what animal she was thinking of—a fox. A deceptively difficult question that requires you to access somebody’s mind. A couple of you were able to do this without hesitation—an impressive feat indeed. And so,” said Sir Bentley, turning the screens on the window back on and filling the room with light once more, “you are now familiar with the Ability. As pupils here, you are officially agents minor for MI18. Any questions?”
Philip raised his hand.
“So we’ll be working for you?”
“You will be studying, but as you have learned from your short introduction to Swahili—that won’t take up too much of your time. As for your role as agents minor, you will be asked to help us with gathering some information.”
“What kind of information is this you want?” asked Sebastian.
“Forget Swahili; Pedro needs The Beginner’s Guide to English,” laughed Rex.
“Rex!” boomed Sir Bentley. “My patience wears thin quickly. Pull yourself together and keep your mouth closed unless you have something positive to say.” Rex looked surprised at the rebuke and looked down at his desk.
“In response to your question, Sebastian, we are looking for some answers. The Ability is incredibly powerful, and if the wrong people were to find out about it, it could cause a great deal of harm. Unfortunately, that seems to be exactly what has happened. You may remember that a few weeks ago a man called Cecil Humphries suffered a breakdown on national television while visiting a school.”
“Who is Cecil Humphries?” asked Daisy.
“The politician who stole chocolate from that sick girl’s bedside,” said Philip.
“Oh, that’s not nice.”
“Well, no,” said Sir Bentley. “He was, nevertheless, a government minister and was once a teacher here at Myers Holt.”
“I thought it was a new school,” interrupted Rex.
“No, not exactly,” said Sir Bentley. “Myers Holt opened during World War Two as a school for just one class of very special children each year. Here the pupils were taught, as you will be, to use their Ability so that they could help the government with gathering information. It ran for many years within this very building as the headquarters of MI18 until, thirty years ago, it was closed down. At that time, believe it or not, I was actually a teacher here, as was Cecil Humphries.
“It was never the intention to reopen the school, until Cecil, before he was . . . incapacitated, managed to let us know that the cause of his breakdown was someone using the Ability on him. We believe we know the boy who did it, but we have no more information about him other than what he looks like and that he has mastered some incredibly complex techniques using the Ability, techniques that he must have been taught to use. It turns out that he was not a pupil at the school where the incident occurred, and despite our best efforts we have come to a dead end. However, we know that there is somebody out there using the Ability for harm, and that is of great concern to us. And so, after nearly thirty years, we have made the decision to reopen Myers Holt. We hope you will be able to help us find out who the boy is and how he learned to use the Ability. Any questions?”
Philip raised his hand. “So how come I have never heard of this? If every child who is twelve has the Ability, then we would all know about it.”
“Interesting question, Philip,” said Sir Bentley, and Philip puffed up with pride.
“The answer to that is that most people do not want to believe what they do not understand. Children who are not trained to use the Ability, for the most part, will never know exactly what they were capable of during their twelfth year. Any strange activity will normally be dismissed as coincidence and ignored. Any other questions?”
“Why did you close Myers Holt?” asked Chris.
Sir Bentley shifted uncomfortably. “It’s a difficult answer, but I’m going to be completely honest with you all. Our last mission was not a successful one. We had become complacent and decided to experiment using a new technique called Inferno that requires close proximity to the target. In doing so, we placed our agents minor in a dangerous situation that had tragic consequences.”
“Tragic? Did somebody die?” asked Daisy, horrified.
“Well, yes. On that terrible night, two children lost their lives. Myers Holt was closed the following day.”
The children all gasped.
“But,” said Sir Bentley, putting his hand up to get their attention, “we have learned our lesson. We would never ask you to do anything that would place you in any danger. If we had any doubts about that, you would not be here today. I will live with the events of that night for the rest of my life, and it is not without careful consideration that we decided to reopen the facility. Your safety will be of my utmost concern. That is my solemn promise to you all.”
“Forget it! I have better things to do than to get myself killed,” said Rex. For once, the others nodded in agreement with him.
“And that is your decision. As I said earlier, at the end of today you will be asked whether you choose to stay here. If you decide not to, then you will be free to leave and return to your old schools. However, if you decide to stay, you will not only have the opportunity to save lives and serve your country, but you will also be given skills that will help you to achieve great things in your own lives. It may interest you to know that one of my former pupils at Myers Holt was Edward Banks.”
“The prime minister?” asked Chris.
“Yes, the prime minister. He came from a broken home and struggled at school. By the age of ten he could barely read. When he was twelve years old, he was accepted into Myers Holt, and only a few years later he was the youngest-ever law graduate of Oxford University and went on to become a very successful lawyer before deciding to turn his hand to politics. As I said, Myers Holt will give you the tools to become extremely successful in any field of your choosing.”
“But,” interrupted Philip, “I don’t understand. If you lose the Ability at thirteen, then what use will that be?”
“You will lose the Ability, but you will retain all the information you learn in that time. Imagine, by July of next year you could all be speaking ten languages fluently and be working on university-level mathematics with ease. It will change your lives for the better, that I can guarantee you.
“Well, I think you’ve heard enough from me for one day. And now I would like to introduce you to somebody who will explain our Mind Access Program—MAP, for short. Follow me,” he said.
They walked dow
n the hallway and into the think-tank room, where six cubicles glowed and hummed in the darkness. Sir Bentley switched on the light to reveal a stout old man kneeling on top of the lime-green cubicle with a screwdriver. He looked up in surprise, wobbled, and then fell from sight, landing on the floor below with a crash.
Sir Bentley hurried round and helped up the old man, who was red-faced and flustered.
“You rather took me by surprise,” explained the man.
“Of course, of course, are you hurt?” asked Sir Bentley, looking concerned.
“No, not at all. I’m well padded,” he said, patting his stomach. He adjusted his glasses and turned to face the children.
“Well, well, our new recruits.”
“Children, this is Professor Ingleby. He is the chief engineer for the government research-and-development division, and he has kindly agreed to help us design the most effective training program possible to teach you how to use your Ability.”
“Delighted, delighted!” he exclaimed, walking round to shake each of the children’s hands vigorously. “And what fun we have in store for you!”
His enthusiasm was contagious, and the children all smiled, even Rex.
“These cubicles have been built with each one of you in mind. Using information gathered from your school records and your interviews, you have been assigned a teacher that will best suit your personality to guide you through the program. Inside, you will have an opportunity to learn how to use your Ability. The program is as realistic as possible and reacts to your brain waves—you can control it by thinking. Isn’t that marvelous?”
Philip nodded enthusiastically.
“Unfortunately,” said the professor, “we have not yet managed to develop a computer program that can truly replicate the human mind, and so for that you will also have lessons outside of this classroom. I’ll say no more, but let you enter the wonder of MAP.” He picked up a clipboard and peered over his glasses.
“Sebastian, you are in the green cubicle. Philip in purple. Lexi in orange, Christopher in red, Rex in blue, and Daisy, I believe you rather like the color pink.”
Daisy nodded enthusiastically.
The Ability (Ability, The) Page 11