by Paul Gamble
“Jack, when we get to the Ministry I don’t want you to tell them about Edwyn’s allergic reaction or Mr. M and the model farm.”
“But those are exactly the kinds of things that we’re supposed to investigate in the Ministry.”
“I know, but you promised that you’d help me find my mother. That’s what we’re supposed to be focused on at the moment. If we start on another case we’ll never find her. I know you want to find out the truth about everything—but just for once can you try and focus on what I need you to?”
Jack gulped. This was exactly the part of the story he hadn’t shared with her yet. He braced himself, unsure of how Trudy would react to the full truth. “About that, Trudy—I was kind of accidentally focusing on what you wanted me to. Mr. M … he didn’t give much away—but he did say he was a scientist.…”
Trudy’s brow furrowed with thought, then rebounded in surprise as she realized what Jack was saying. “A scientist? Like the scientist who is supposed to be holding my mother captive?” She grabbed Jack by his blazer lapels and shook him. “What exactly did he say?”
Jack gently removed Trudy’s hands from his lapels and tried to remember the number of a TV commercial he had seen that promised to deal with whiplash injuries. “He didn’t say a whole lot more than that. He said he was going to kill us before we figured anything out. He’d learned that much from how we’d defeated Blackbeard and the queen of Atlantis. He basically said he was the scientist who worked for the queen of Atlantis—and therefore he was holding your mother.”
Trudy leaned forward and rapped on the glass partition that separated them from the driver. “What are you doing?” asked Jack.
“We’re going back to the school. We’re going to find that scientist and get answers out of him.”
Jack slowly shook his head. “That won’t work. We need to be smarter than that. There’s no way Mr. M will go back to the model farm after it got blown up.”
Trudy sat back in her seat. A tear appeared in the corner of her eye. “But … but … well, we should go back and at least see if there’s any evidence.”
“Mmm,” said Jack, “normally I’d agree with you on that, but you might remember that I sort of accidentally set fire to most of the evidence. There’ll probably be lots of firemen around it at this point.” Jack never thought he would feel guilty about blowing up a farm, but Trudy looked so sad he couldn’t help feeling that his actions may have been slightly irresponsible.
“We need to do something. We need to find my mum.”
“That’s what we’re doing. We know what the scientist looks like now. Maybe we can talk to Grey—he might have an idea who Mr. M actually is. And that might give us enough evidence to find your mother.”
Trudy thought for a moment. “Okay—so tell me everything you remember about him.”
Jack collected his thoughts in his still slightly rattled head. “Okay. Well, he has long white hair and a beard. Wears a lab coat.… Okay, that isn’t too helpful.… But wait—he’s involved in genetic engineering. Plants, crops, even animals. That kind of thing.”
Trudy nodded thoughtfully. “And do you think he might have something to do with Edwyn going crazy this morning?”
“Quite possibly. Mr. M said he’d genetically engineered crops so that they didn’t cause allergic reactions; maybe he can do the opposite as well. It could have been a genetically engineered peanut that turned Edwyn into a monster!”
Trudy sighed. “But why would he want Edwyn to have such an extreme allergic reaction?” She thumped her fist on the door in annoyance. Jack’s shoulder, which was what Trudy normally thumped in annoyance, felt slightly sorry for the car door.
“I think it’s all connected,” Jack mused. “The film people are providing healthy food. Also a lot of kids and parents will be scared into stopping eating junk food by Edwyn’s allergic reaction.”
“But why would some kind of villain want us all to eat healthier?”
“It never makes sense at this stage,” said Jack. “On the bright side, I’ve nearly been killed already, and that’s normally a sign that we’re making progress.”
Trudy smiled. “Yes, you were nearly killed. That is good.”
“Oh—and there’s one other thing. Mr. M said that he had been looking for some kind of boulder or stone. He sort of went into a daydreamy state when he talked about it.”
* * *
The Ministry headquarters were hidden under the Ulster Museum in the center of Belfast. When they got there, Jack and Trudy ran through the visitor entrance, up the stairs, and into the Mummy Room, where the elaborate sarcophagus of the ancient mummy Takabuti sat. Trudy quickly punched the stone hand that made the glass case and the sarcophagus lift up, letting them run down the stairs that led to the Ministry.
As they reached the bottom of the passage they were greeted by Grey, their erstwhile mentor. Normally Grey was the picture of elegance, with a haircut that was calibrated to the last inch and an immaculately tailored Savile Row suit. However, on this occasion Grey did not look like his normal self. His hair was mussed, his jacket was flapping open, and his shirt was covered in rips and tears.
“We need to get to somewhere safe,” he barked at Jack and Trudy.
“Is the Ministry under attack?” Trudy asked.
“I wish it were that simple.…” Grey turned and glanced down the corridor. “Look, I’ll explain later—in the meantime we should run.”
Trudy and Jack peered at what Grey was looking at. There was a thundering sound as a crowd of figures ran toward them. Although they were moving quickly, Jack made out a stone giant, a fluffy teddy bear, a half-lizard-half-chicken creature, a cyclops, a large floating sheet, and a horse with an enormous pair of wings.
“Oh,” Jack said, “there’s a name for a horse with wings, isn’t there?”32
The crowd continued running toward them with no sign of stopping. Trudy grabbed Jack by his shirt cuff and pulled him. “Jack, if you stay here any longer you won’t be worrying about what the name for a winged horse is. You’ll be worrying about what the name is for a boy who has hoofmarks all over his back.”
Jack realized Trudy had a very good point and bolted down the corridor following Trudy and Grey. They avoided being trampled by ducking down a side passage. Jack tried to catch his breath and hoped that nothing else dramatic would happen.
“DOWN!” Grey leapt forward and pushed Trudy and Jack to the ground. Three javelins sailed mere inches over their heads and thunked into the floor.
“If the Ministry isn’t under attack, what’s happening?” Trudy asked.
Jack looked at the javelins. He had an idea. “Sports day?”
Grey smiled, impressed at Jack’s deductive ability. “Precisely, Jack. It’s the annual Ministry Sports and Training Day.”
Trudy frowned. “Sports days can’t be that bad.”
“Normally I’d agree with you, Trudy, but unfortunately the Minister himself organizes the events and he really doesn’t know that much about sports.”
Trudy pulled one of the javelins out of the ground and felt its tip. “These are deadly sharp.”
Grey nodded. “They’re for the javelin catching contest.”
“Javelin catching?” Trudy’s eyes widened.
“There’s a really nice medal for it if you win.” Grey paused for a second. “Of course, no one who has ever won the competition has managed to stay alive for long enough to collect their medal. Come to think of it, they’d probably be better giving the winner bandages and an antiseptic instead.”
“Are all the activities on sports day this dangerous?” Jack asked.
“Oh no.” Grey shook his head. “The Minister’s idea was to create a Sports and Training Day that would enhance Ministry staff skills. Some of the events are quite safe indeed.”
“For instance?” asked Trudy.
“Well, there was a disguise competition earlier today—there were hardly any injuries in that.”
“And did the winner
get a medal?”
“Sadly, no,” admitted Grey. “We aren’t sure who won it. The winner was wearing a really good disguise.” Grey pushed Trudy and Jack flat against the wall as a massive ball of blubber and tentacles rolled down the corridor past them. “I think that was the wrestling competition—but it’s hard to tell.”
“Look, Grey, can we find somewhere quiet to talk? I think we might have the first clues to finding my mother,” said Trudy.
Grey’s face shone with excitement—he used to work with Trudy’s mother and was keen to find her. “Well, I can think of one room in the Ministry where people don’t generally go.”
It took a long time for Grey to lead them to the room. They found themselves walking back and forth, going around corners, climbing up ladders, and running down stairs. Jack began to suspect that Grey didn’t really know where he was going.
Just as Jack was giving up hope of ever getting to the room, Grey turned to the wall at random and opened a door that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Grey quickly ushered Jack and Trudy inside.
Jack had been in some strange rooms in the Ministry, but this one was definitely amongst the oddest. This was partly because the term room didn’t really seem to properly apply to it. As far as Jack could see, there wasn’t a floor, there weren’t any walls, and there certainly wasn’t a ceiling. Jack was fairly certain that there had been a door.… He could remember that because they’d used it to walk through. But the minute they had gotten inside, the door had snapped shut, sealed itself, and then winked out of existence.
And now they were hanging in the air surrounded by nothing. But at least it was a bright, white nothing—which was a lot more cheery than those kind of black and sinister nothings that you occasionally came across.
As if the room itself wasn’t weird enough, they were surrounded by objects that seemed to be randomly floating in the air—just like they were themselves. Jack looked around and could see pairs of glasses, odd socks, umbrellas, wallets, marbles.… “Um, where are we, exactly? And is it safe to just be hanging in the air like this? Surely we should be over a net or wearing some kind of safety harness?”
“We’re lost,” said Grey.
“How can we be lost? Didn’t we just come in here?” asked Trudy as she floated in a rather leisurely and nonchalant manner. It annoyed Jack that she even seemed to float more gracefully than he did.
“We’re lost because this is the Lost and Found room. It’s a bit strange and disorienting, so people don’t generally come here. But it’s a good place for a quiet chat for that very reason.”
A green golf umbrella that had been hanging beside Jack’s head suddenly winked out of existence. “What happened there?” Jack said, startled. “Can that happen to us? Are we at risk of disappearing?”
“We’re perfectly safe. Look, it works like this. Things can be both lost and found—right?”
“Okay, that seems sensible,” said Trudy.
“And you’d also agree that something can’t be both lost and found at the same time, right? Because if it was lost then it wouldn’t be found. And if you found it, it couldn’t be lost?”
“That seems more confusing than it needs to be,” said Jack, “but let’s just say that we understand so far.…”
“That’s the problem. It doesn’t make any sense. Logically ‘lost’ and ‘found’ have to be two different places. Because they’re very different things. But having said that, when you find something, it’s in the same place that you lost it.”
“You’re being deliberately confusing here; don’t think that we don’t know that,” grumbled Jack.
Trudy disagreed. “No, it makes sense. Lost and found are two completely different things. Therefore, they couldn’t be in the same place. In the same way that light and dark can’t be in the same place. If a place is light then it can’t be dark. And if it’s dark it can’t be light. It makes sense for lost and found to be the same as well.”
“Exactly,” said Grey. A set of car keys appeared right in front of his face, seemingly out of nowhere. He pushed them out of the way. “So that’s what this room does. This is the ‘lost’ dimension.” Grey waved his hands, signaling the white space around them. “When you ‘lose’ something it goes to the ‘lost’ dimension. Then when you ‘find’ it, it winks out of existence here and reappears back in the actual world. That way it stops ‘lost and found’ from being in the same place.”
“So…,” said Jack, reluctant to accept this logic, but not seeing any real alternative, “what would happen if this place didn’t exist?”
“Then ‘lost and found’ would be in the same place. It would be like antimatter and matter coming together. No one really knows—the universe might explode. Or … we just might not lose as much stuff. One or the other.”33
“O—kay, let’s not try that just in case it’s the exploding option,” said Jack. “Just out of interest, who built this room anyway?”
Grey shook his head. “No one built it, Jack. This place has always existed as long as people have lost things.”
“In that case, why is it here in the Ministry?”
Grey laughed. “Well, it isn’t always ‘here.’ In fact, I don’t even know how to get here.”
“But you led us here!” Trudy exclaimed.
“Don’t you remember how we got here? I just wandered around and around, going in a random direction until I was…”
“Lost!” cried Jack. “That’s how you find this room! You just get lost and then open the first door you can find!”
Grey nodded. “That’s it! Simple, really.”
A mobile phone appeared beside Jack’s head. “Umm, this phone’s a more up-to-date version than mine is.… Do you think I could…?”
“Take it? Afraid not. Apart from the moral implications of stealing, mobile phones never stay lost for long. Just wait.” Grey paused for a few seconds. The phone started ringing. “This happens a lot. People lose their phone and then they ring it to try to find it. And then…” The phone disappeared back into nothing. “They find it again and so it pops back into existence.”
“But why are we floating?” asked Jack.
“Ahh, now that is quite interesting. According to Ministry records there used to be gravity in this room right up until 1687.”
“What happened then?”
“Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity. And once gravity had been ‘found,’ it disappeared from the Lost and Found room. Hence us floating so elegantly.”
“This is really fascinating, but I didn’t come here just to float and talk about losing and finding things. I wanted to talk about finding my mother.”
Jack and Trudy updated Grey on what they’d discovered so far. They were slightly disappointed with Grey’s answer. “I wish I could be more helpful—but a man with shaggy white hair and a lab coat? That describes about fifty percent of the world’s male scientists.”
“What about the fact that he was looking for a stone?”
Grey shrugged. “I’m afraid that could be almost anything. Magic stones are a dime a dozen. It could be a rune stone, or perhaps the control stone for a golem. Or something else entirely.”
Jack thought hard. “What about Stonehenge? Those are some pretty famous stones.”
“They are, Jack, but they’re also some pretty large stones. It seems unlikely that someone would have brought them over to Northern Ireland. I’m sure if that had happened we’d have seen something on the news.”
Jack looked at Grey sarcastically. “You’re right, that seems pretty unlikely. Whereas someone sailing the country off, or sinking it under the sea, those seem like normal things. Don’t we deal in things that are unusual?”
Grey laughed. “You’re right, Jack. I suppose that could be something, but you’d need some kind of evidence.”
“We aren’t making any progress on finding my mum,” Trudy complained.
Grey disagreed. “You’re making brilliant progress, Trudy. Jack nearly getting killed means you’re d
efinitely heading in the right direction. If you want to find your mother, locate the most dangerous direction and keep heading that way.”
Trudy sighed and looked around the Lost and Found room. “My mother’s lost. And yet she isn’t in here.”
Grey put a hand on Trudy’s shoulder. “I’m afraid that isn’t the case. Your mother isn’t lost. She knows exactly where she is. It’s us who don’t know where she is.”
“We’ll find your mother, Trudy,” Jack said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “We just need to put together the clues and track down this Mr. M. But we aren’t going to get any further floating around. Grey, how do we get out of here?”
“Figure it out for yourself!”
Jack thought hard. “Well, we got lost to get in here. And that’s how you found the door.”
“You’re on the right track,” Grey encouraged.
“So, we found the door because we were lost. But then it disappeared from the room because we’d found it. So … all we need to do is realize that we don’t know where the door is. Because that makes it lost again and then…”
The door winked back into existence, floating right in front of them. They opened it and left the Lost and Found room as quickly as they could.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
STONEHENGE
PURPOSE BEHIND ITS BEING BUILT
Many people have suggested different ideas as to what Stonehenge was actually used for. Ministry scientists have not come up with a definitive answer yet, but have confirmed that current suggestions are unlikely to be true.
Some people think it may have been a calendar, but this is unlikely, because if it were a calendar it would have been covered in carved pictures of kittens or ladies in swimsuits or Justin Bieber or even David Hasselhoff.
Another suggestion was that because they found so many people buried around it, Stonehenge might have been a primitive hospital. But quite clearly this is ridiculous. If Stonehenge were actually a hospital, it would have been a really, really awful one. A good rule of thumb is that if you are deciding which hospital to visit, it’s best to pick the one without lots and lots of dead people outside it.