The Knight's Armor
Page 24
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
THE FUTURE
FEAR OF IT
Over the years many people have spent a great deal of time thinking about the future, how we can predict it, and how we can change it. Which is ironic, because by focusing on the future we actually miss the chance to change it by doing things right now. A good rule of thumb is that you should never trust anyone who tells you they can predict the future unless they have won the lottery at least twice.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks as always go to my agent, Gemma Cooper, a friend who magically appears in both my email inbox and my footnotes.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Gamble, author of The Ministry of SUITs and The Monster’s Daughter, was born and brought up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He currently works in the civil service. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
1. Just Begin Again
2. Merchandise and Monsters
3. The Next Top Superhero Sidekick
4. Blood Tests
5. Shocking Changes
6. Model Farms and Less-Than-Model Pupils
7. The Tendrils of Doom
8. Shake the Room
9. Lost and Found
10. Strange Food
11. Wake Up, Sleepyhead
12. David Bulks Up
13. Audition
14. Grain Silo
15. The Red Barn
16. Mechanical Giants
17. Falling for You
18. Going Underground
19. The Unexpected Expected
20. The Upside to Being Lost
21. Non-Euclidian Filing Cabinets
22. Hiding in Plain Sight
23. There Be Dragons
24. Put on Your Dancing Shoes
25. Hide and Seek
26. Meet the Meerkats
27. Family Reunion
28. Getting the Point
29. Homecoming Queen
30. Happiness and Secrets
31. Because Sometimes Even Parents are Helpful
32. Car Chase
33. The Problems of Stardom
34. Putting the Pieces in Place
35. This Sucks
36. This Really Sucks
37. The History of a Scientist
38. Counterplotting
39. Alternative Uses of Tinfoil
40. Giant Problems, But No Lion or Witch
41. Magnetic Personalities
42. When Even the Best Choice is Awful
43. Certain Death
44. A Shocking Climax
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Paul Gamble
Feiwel and Friends
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
mackids.com
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gamble, Paul, 1975– author.
Title: The knight’s armor: Book 3 of the Ministry of SUITs / Paul Gamble.
Description: First edition. | New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2018. | Summary: When twelve-year-old Jack Pease and his partner, Trudy, operatives of the Ministry of Strange, Unusual, and Impossible Things, try to find Trudy’s mother, who is being held prisoner by an evil scientist named Mr. M, they uncover a nefarious scheme that involves the legend of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Excalibur.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017041737 | ISBN 9781250076847 (hardcover)
Subjects: | CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Merlin (Legendary character)—Fiction. | Arthur, King—Fiction. | Scientists—Fiction. | Belfast (Northern Ireland)—Fiction. | Northern Ireland—Fiction. | Science fiction. | Humorous stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.G353 Kn 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017041737
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
First edition, 2018
eBook edition, July 2018
eISBN 9781250177155
1 Scientists claim that chaos theory arises from complexity and uncertainty in the world. However, the real reason chaos theory arises is because scientists needed an explanation as to why so much of what they claimed to be right, turned out to be wrong. In a more honest world, all scientific papers would be finished with the sentence: “And this time we’re almost sure that we’ve gotten it right.…” (Although generally, they wouldn’t have.)
2 If you think humans have high levels of social pressure, think about what it’s like for caterpillars. Butterflies are always appearing on jewelry, tattoos, or the logos of charities and companies. But the poor caterpillar hardly gets any attention at all. In fact, in the one book I can remember about a caterpillar the author seemed to be suggesting that it needed to worry about getting fat, because that book only seemed to talk about how much it was eating.
3 On second thought, it’s probably best if you don’t try this. Even if you do manage to get the stupid thing together, it’s almost impossible to get it out the door afterward. (Incidentally, this is also why Harry Potter never made an attempt to escape from the Dursleys by hang glider.)
4 Jack is right about this. It is also the reason that you never see superheroes playing sports. Because after Superman had diverted an asteroid from destroying the planet you can imagine it’d be slightly anticlimactic to be applauded for scoring a touchdown. The other reason superheroes generally don’t play sports is that if they were wearing shorts and a T-shirt, people would notice their tights poking out the bottom and their cape hanging out the back—which would be a dead giveaway.
5 Trudy had injured her arm in their previous adventures when it had been stabbed by a giant mole and then hit by a flying bone fragment from a steam dinosaur. If the last sentence seems slightly odd to you, it might be a good time to buckle up your seat belt, as this is going to get a lot weirder before we get to the end.
6 I know what you’re thinking, but that was an animated penguin. And I’m pretty sure they skimped on the research for that film because it wouldn’t happen in real life. (Unlike everything in this book.)
7 Remember this; it becomes important later on.
8 It’s also interesting to note that sometimes smaller objects were measured in other body parts. Such as the nose. Obviously, during the cold and flu season this was especially unpleasant. In the olden days this conversation was often heard in marketplaces:
“Hey, that banana looks very unripe to me.”
“Actually, the reason it isn’t as yellow as it should be is that the king has a shocking flu at the moment and took a bit longer than normal measuring it.”
9 If you’re wondering what the logo of the hero Static looked like, it was basically a bolt of lightning inside a triangle—like the electrical warning sign you see on the outside of power stations. Except changed in a few subtle ways so that when I finally get around to merchandising it myself, I won’t get in trouble with copyright-infringement lawyers.
10 Jack had counted David’s falls on their way to the classroom. The distance worked out as eight bruises and one minor contusion, as the crow flies.
12 This is true; generally teachers spend as much time in the staff room as possible. The reason for this is simple: The one thing that teachers love most of all in the world is complaining about having to work with children. And you can only do that with other teachers. Because if you complain to children about having to work with children, they tend to get rather miffed.
13 If you haven’t read the first two Ministry of SUITs books, you may not be aware of the awesome power of The Speed. Have you ever noticed that when you are having a bad time (at the dentist, taking exams, or visiting old, dull relatives…) that time seems to slow down? This is because it actually does. Ministry scientists have discovered that negative emotions cause the time around you to slow down. Correspondingly, if you concentrate on your sad thoughts this enables you to move at incredibly fast speeds. But only if the thoughts are really, really sad.
14 Jack is wrong about this.
15 I told you that he’d been wrong about this.
16 It is also why people use the term “as the crow flies” rather than “as the bee flies,” If someone gives you directions “as the bee flies,” they’re sending you on a much longer journey than you really need to go on.
17 Some of you will have read Book 2 of Ministry of SUITs and will therefore know that Static already had a sidekick called Volty. If Volty had heard this speech, it might well have made him jealous except for two key facts: (a) Volty was a hand puppet; (b) at the moment Volty wasn’t with Static because he was at home going through the spin cycle on the washing machine after Static had gotten some Heinz ketchup on him.
More superheroes should look into getting machine-washable sidekicks. Sidekicks are always getting dirty from being beaten up and dragged through mud, so it’s a lot of fuss if they’re “dry clean only.”
18 Not sure if you’ve ever actually tried kneeling in a heroic pose. It’s really not as easy as it first seems. But it’s very good for your core strength and therefore an ideal pose if you’re trying to build up a six-pack. This means that standing in heroic poses will tighten your abdominal muscles and tone your arms. Which is the reason why heroes are generally so awesome-looking and ripped.
19 They really are. I mean … look it up; it’s on Wikipedia and everything.
20 For the sake of full disclosure I feel I should tell you that David’s quizzical eyebrow was his left one. His right eyebrow was reserved solely for when he smelled something funny.
21 It was actually just a blow-up mattress, but to make David feel special his parents had pretended it was a specially ordered inflatable rug.
22 If you ever get a chance, it’s worth asking the Minister to show you his grandmother’s collection of patchwork quilts. They really are beautiful, although the intermittent splatters of blood are slightly off-putting.
23 Which as you can imagine is almost impossible to do.
24 If you want to know how the Trojan War turns out, you’re going to need to read two very long poems called The Iliad and The Odyssey. If that sounds like an awful lot of work, we can summarize it like this. Two guys fight over a girlfriend. One guy turns up at the other guy’s house and creates a bit of a fuss about this. That’s The Iliad. The Odyssey is basically where this guy hides his friends inside a big wooden horse and burns the house down. Then one of the guys heads off to get his dinner and bitterly regrets that he didn’t pay to get the optional extra of GPS fitted to his boat.
25 This is true: No Olympic medals have ever been won by a competitor wearing Wellington boots. Although Usain Bolt probably could do that if he wanted to.
26 It needs to be said that dead people are astonishingly bad at conversations, and in my experience they never even bother to say thank-you no matter how many flowers you bring them.
27 Not only was David’s statement unhelpful, but it was also nonsensical given that David was wearing Wellington boots. In point of fact, what David was looking at was a very small plant tendril draped over his boot giving the impression of an undone shoelace. However, this is entirely irrelevant to the plot and probably defuses the pace and excitement from an otherwise tense situation. Therefore, my agent will almost certainly make me remove this overly long footnote and she’ll probably be right about it as well. However, if you enjoy this footnote and it isn’t here in the final book and you feel moved to make a complaint about it, please feel free to write to Gemma Cooper.
28 Dead people are also notoriously bad at RSVPing and therefore it’s hard to know how much food you need to buy.
29 It is interesting to note that the explosive nature of pigs’ flatulence is one of the reasons that you never see them smoking. Very occasionally a really rebellious piglet will ignore its parents’ advice that “smoking is very bad for your health” and decide to light up. This is where smoked bacon comes from.
It’s also worth noting that the fact that pigs can cause such explosions is a fact that had been known for many hundreds of years and is why sausages can sometimes be referred to as bangers.
30 Yes, yes, okay, I know that potatoes have “eyes,” but they really aren’t those kind of eyes. Frankly, you’re just being silly now.
31 Although pigs are probably the animals that are best known for expelling methane gas, a range of other animals have also been found to eject this useful fuel. One of the animals that has been found to give out a substantial amount is the kangaroo. But this is obvious—after all, you didn’t really think they were jumping that high just by using their legs.
32 Jack is right. All horses with wings have names. This one was called Ivor.
33 Some Ministry scientists have suggested that there isn’t actually any need for a Lost and Found room and the entire setup is a conspiracy invented by sock manufacturers to keep their profits up.
34 I should be clear here that it was Jack’s father saying this and not Jack’s father’s mustache. The mustache didn’t actually say “hello” at all but just kind of nodded in a relaxed and nonchalant way, because that’s just how cool Jack’s father’s mustache was.
35 There are several cases of enchanted pajamas in history, but the most important were those of Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted pajamas meant that during her thousand-year coma she didn’t need to eat or undertake any bodily functions. This is vital, as otherwise when Prince Charming showed up to kiss her, he probably would have smelled the room from outside and have gone home without even pulling back the veil.
It is worth noting that enchanted pajamas can’t solve all problems created by magical comas, however. After she was woken from her slumber, Sleeping Beauty insisted that her engagement to Prince Charming last for two decades. The reason for such a long delay is simple: She didn’t want to get married while she still had blanket creases on her face.
36 It should be noted that Jack’s father’s mustache thought it was even more unfair. The mustache didn’t get a bacon sandwich either, and it was younger than Jack’s father by about twenty-one years.
37 Not many schools have carpet in the corridors and classrooms precisely for the reasons that David and Jack are now discussing. However, Jack and David’s school had had carpet installed because of pirates. If this doesn’t make sense to you, I’d suggest reading the first book—partially because I don’t have enough space here to explain fully, but mainly because I get royalties for every book sold.
38 Or at least they didn’t seem to be doing any of these things any more than they normally did.
39 Before anyone else tries it: The government won’t let you try to create a domino rally out of actual children. I learned that the hard way. What really annoys me was that I was pretty sure I had enough children-dominos lined up to get me into the Guinness Book of World Records.
40 Stampede is
a strange word that can almost be regarded as magical—because it’s almost impossible to say it at the wrong time. If you notice a stampede and shout out to warn people, then you said it at the right time. However, even when there isn’t actually a stampede, if you shout out “STAMPEDE!” you tend to cause one to happen—so it turns out you were right anyway.
41 People think that gravity’s strong because it keeps us from flying off the planet. But the truth is that gravity on Earth only seems strong because the Earth is so big. It’s like this. When you see an ant lift a leaf, you tend to think it’s strong. But you wouldn’t think the same about an elephant that lifted a leaf.
It’s also good in many ways that objects have to be enormous before they exert a significant gravitational force. The Earth is huge and round, and we stick to the side of it. But if a football exhibited the same kind of effect, then it would be pretty much impossible to have a sensible game of football.…
42 It is interesting to note that bottomless pits are rather problematic things. The most important thing to remember is to have them aligned properly. A pit without a bottom will allow you to fall forever if it’s vertical. However, if it’s horizontal, it just means that there’s a hole at both ends, and that isn’t a bottomless pit—it’s just a tunnel. However, evil villains do tend to use the phrase bottomless pit no matter how it’s aligned, because telling someone that they were going to throw you into a tunnel isn’t as scary.