‘Now, as I’m sure you can imagine, Mister Meckler is finding our world not only very different to the one he grew up in, but also very difficult to understand. He would like to join us today to try and understand how we learn at school, so I would ask you to be kind and tolerant of Mister Meckler if he joins your talk group.’
I really did feel exposed and embarrassed sitting in front of all those kids, they all seemed to be looking at me, I didn’t sense any hostility, only sympathy for the poor fool. It wasn’t pleasant.
One of the male teachers addressed the school informing them of a sporting event that was taking place that afternoon and that the maker room was open to grade 7 from lunchtime.
There was then some very energetic singing, I’d say an African influence was fairly strong in this short session but clearly the whole school took part. Some of the bigger kids played instruments, and by bigger I mean the girls were way taller than me. There was a lot of drumming, some bagpipes and a few guitar type instruments but mainly it was a couple of thousand kids singing at the top of their lungs. It was very uplifting and energising. I couldn’t understand the words as they weren’t singing in English as far as I could make out but it was all very jolly.
When the assembly was over the children filed out, there was plenty of noise although they seemed very disciplined and orderly. I followed the blonde man called Porlock and ended up in a large room with raised seating around the walls. There were huge windows high above us giving the place the most extraordinary light feeling. Most of the school children in this class looked to me to be in their early teens, there were three boys among the forty or so kids in the room, it was easy to notice and count them as they were so rare.
‘Okay, I’m going to explain to Gavin what we do in here guys. It might be good if we ran through some of the exercises we did yesterday. Jum and Ned, would you take the floor.’
A young girl and a very tall gangly boy stood in the centre of the room, I found a seat next to Porlock and watched with interest.
The boy called Ned started running around in circles as the girl called Jum was shouting at him to be careful. The class started laughing, which was understandable, Ned’s gangly great legs and hopelessly waving arms reminded me of a baby giraffe, very unstable. Before long he did a quite badly acted fall and followed this up with some equally unconvincing pain acting.
‘I’ve grazed my knee,’ he said. ‘My skin is broken, aaarrrggh. I’ve got a hole in my skin, will it stay like that for ever? Oh no, my blood juice will all escape and I’ll turn into a zombie.’
For some reason this made the class roar with laughter which slowly calmed down as Jum waved her arms around.
‘Don’t panic, your adult stem cells will repair the hole.’
The room went very quiet, I looked around realising that I had clearly missed the point.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked Porlock. He leant over and whispered in my ear.
‘They’re accessing stem call data, they don’t know anything about stem cells, each improvisation brings up a new topic, only Jum and Ned had a clue, I suggested stem cells to them this morning.’
‘I don’t know anything about stem cells,’ I whispered back. Porlock pulled his head back in genuine shock. ‘Wow, did you go to school?’
I smiled and sat back in my seat and tried to do the relaxing thing. I knew at once that stem cells are biological cells found in all multicellular organisms, through a process called mitosis they can divide and also differentiate into diverse specialised cell types and can self-renew to produce more stem cells.
I just knew that all at once. Again it was as if I’d always known it.
‘That is amazing,’ I said as Ned started running around again.
‘Okee diddle de dokee!’ he shouted as he ran his gangly circuit once more. ‘My stem cells are renewing the tissue on my knee, the hole will heal over, my blood juice will stay in my body sack!’
Another gale of laughter from the rest of the class.
‘Thanks guys,’ said Porlock. ‘Top stuff Ned and Jum.’ The two beamed at each other as they received a warm round of applause. ‘And, I think Mister Meckler learned something too. Back in his day students had to learn by reading paper books and memorising quite stupendous amounts of facts. They would, however, also learn to interpret information as they grew familiar with a subject, they would be able to analyse information and reject what was not relevant. Is that correct?’
He was looking at me as he asked the last question. I nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ I said. I really didn’t want to talk, I wanted to observe and not be noticed.
‘Okay, that’s okay,’ said Porlock, he patted my forearm reassuringly.
‘Can I ask a question?’ said one of the other boys in the room. His name was David, I just looked at him and I knew his name was David, he was fourteen.
Porlock looked at me. ‘Is that okay?’
‘Yes, sorry, go ahead.’ I said, I didn’t want to be surly and sit in total silence.
‘What was fighting like?’
That came out of the blue and of course the fact that he could ask me that revealed so much about these children’s lives.
‘Fighting? You mean like wars and stuff?’
‘No, fighting with someone, another person you knew but didn’t agree with. Would you hit them?’
‘Well, no, I never did, certainly some people did, boys and girls but mostly boys. There were boys in my school, which as Porlock has explained were very, very different to this. Some of the boys in my school would get into fights. I would avoid them if I could, and I got quite good at running fast.’
I laughed as I said this, but no one joined me; the looks on the faces in the room made it clear they didn’t think running away from someone who wants to hurt you would be funny. They were right of course, but I wanted to explain that such events could be funny in the re-telling.
‘So not all boys had to fight,’ asked David.
‘No. Not in my time. I can tell you it was horrible, I certainly got hit by other boys once or twice but I never hit back. It seemed stupid and pointless to me. My brother liked to fight, he was one of the boys who would get angry and hit people, he hit me loads when we were kids. It’s not nice and if you really don’t fight any more, well, I think that’s great. But I suppose it’s important to explain about the dates and the time I come from. I left my home time in 2011, we weren’t at war.’
‘What about the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the problems in Somalia and the Sudan,’ said a girl who I would swear was under ten years old.
‘Ah, so you do know your history, okay, yes, there were wars going on, but not huge ones that involved everybody. My grandfather fought in World War II, he was a sailor and although he survived many of his friends were killed or injured. I never fought in a war, I wasn’t a soldier, I didn’t know how to fire a gun or fight people, not every man back then was violent, I want you to know that.’
Some of the kids nodded to show me they understood.
At that point Porlock stood up and clapped his hands.
‘Great stuff, okay, let’s start another exercise,’ said Porlock, then turning to me he said. ‘Mister Meckler, you are welcome to stay and join in.’
I did so. I learned about autologous embryonic stem cells generated through therapeutic cloning and stored in vast databases for use in physical repairs after severe accidents.
I watched as the children expanded their knowledge of the world of biology at an incredible rate, my feeble twenty-first-century brain had no chance keeping up with them.
By the time we broke for lunch I was exhausted. The kids ran outside into what was, I suppose, the garden behind the house although it resembled woodland more than a garden. I watched through the windows of the staffroom as they climbed trees, ran about after each other and sat
about talking.
Porlock joined me by the window and handed me a container of delicious juice.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘This is an amazing place. I was dreading coming today.’
‘Oh really, why was that?’
‘I’m just not cut out to speak to kids, I can still remember how weird I thought adults were when I was their age, it makes me uncomfortable and self-conscious to talk to big groups of kids.’
‘You don’t need to worry about it, Gavin, I think they were really intrigued by you, they would have asked you questions all day if I’d let them.’
‘They’re really bright though, is this a special school for super bright kids?’
Porlock laughed. ‘Not at all, it’s just a standard school, they’re all the same, we don’t have schools for special kids, they all muck in together as that’s a far more effective method.’
‘But I can’t help wondering if they really know and understand anything if they have instant access to all knowledge. I mean like mathematics, can they really understand how numbers work together if they just sort of, well, have…’
I ran out, I didn’t even know how to ask the question but Porlock was nodding. ‘Okay, so they may not be able to write, you know, like I suspect you can, write with a hand-held writing tool.’
‘A pen.’
‘I guess that’s what I mean, they may not be able to use a pen to make marks on a piece of paper say, a column of numbers and add them up, but they can look at a column of numbers and the answer will appear to them; however, they also understand how those numbers add up, why they do and how any adjustments within the column of numbers would affect the end result. We can all do that, you could do that.’
‘Amazing. I have to accept it works but it is so alien to anything I could understand,’ I said. ‘But tell me this, the data base, the source of the information. That, surely, is reliant on a complex communication system, a series of networked artificial intelligence systems, computers. Surely that’s reliant on a constant energy supply, if that failed wouldn’t everyone suddenly be back in the dark times. No one would know anything, you’d all be in a right mess.’
Porlock had to think about this for a moment. ‘That’s a very intelligent question, Gavin, I’m impressed. Okay, so the system is not centralised, it is, as you suggest, networked over a vast area, powered by so many millions of separate, independent power sources that, well, if the sun went out, we would be in serious trouble, but then we’d all be dead anyway. So it really isn’t something we worry about. The data isn’t stored in one central place, or even in many large places. The data is woven into the fabric of the structures that surround us.’
He rested his hand on the broad windowsill in front of us. ‘In here, in the paint, the structure of the building.’ He pointed up to the high ceiling above us. ‘Up there, the entire building is a data storage system. Every part of the city built in the last one hundred years or so is part of the network. Not only that, every part of every building exposed to direct sun light is in effect an energy harvesting system, this is backed up by geostationary solar stations which deliver massive back-up power regardless of time of day. I believe this power transfer, down to the power-fields which I believe you are aware of, this is what appears to cause the anomaly physics you became a victim of.’
I brushed my hand along the visually perfect surface of the windowsill, it was incredibly smooth and regular, clearly whatever technology was embedded wasn’t some kind of printed circuit or any kind of microelectronics that I would recognise.
I thanked Porlock and then ate lunch with some of the men who taught in the school. Many of these men, including Porlock, had to leave immediately afterwards to return to their own children. They were replaced with a few other men and a small handful of women teachers who I learned were coaching the older children in more advanced classes.
In the afternoon I sat in on a music class which was mind-blowing; children playing all manner of instruments and playing all manner of music. Most of it was unknown to me but they did at one point play some ‘classics’. One of those was LA Woman by the Doors played brilliantly by a group of ten-year-olds. Breathtaking.
I met Ralph outside the school at the end of the day and walked with him and Natasha back to the Institute. As we walked I reflected on how I suddenly understood so much more about how my body worked, how the chemicals needed to allow my muscles to function were carried through my circulation, I didn’t read a book or watch a film, I didn’t listen to a teacher try and impart this knowledge, I just knew it.
Nkoyo was in the reception of the Institute when I arrived back there.
‘You look very happy,’ she said as I walked in.
‘I’ve had a fairly amazing day, I went to school,’ I said with a big grin on my face.
‘I know,’ she said. We walked together along the now very familiar corridor back to the lovely room where I had my first breakfast. ‘Now, Gavin, I know you don’t enjoy appearing in public but I’m receiving a lot of requests for your presence at various gatherings. Would you be prepared to attend maybe one or two?’
I felt a weight descend on me. I didn’t want to be a celebrity with loads of people looking at me thinking I was a freak.
‘What sort of gatherings?’ I asked.
‘I would only suggest the most prestigious, I don’t want to burden you but there are some really influential, and I want to add, very sympathetic and kind people who would love to meet you.’
I sighed, it was a kind of fake big sigh, the sort of thing a school kid would do when they realise they have to do something for the grown-ups. I had to remind myself that I was thirty-two years old.
‘Yes, okay,’ I said finally. ‘But not too many.’
18
Skimming the Waves
It’s stating the obvious that I’d seen ships before, who hasn’t? Even if you know nothing about them, everyone who’s been to the seaside has probably seen a ship. I’ve even had the opportunity to sail on a few massive tankers in South America and the Middle East through my work back before 2011. I never fail to be intrigued by the fact that a massive metal object can float on a vast quantity of unstable fluid.
My first experience of large ships was as a ten-year-old, when we caught the ferry from Dover to Calais for a family holiday. My mum didn’t want to go through the Eurotunnel because she thought it might leak. She didn’t say this outright, she just said she ‘had her reasons’.
I assumed it was because she was afraid of it leaking.
Being a fairly precocious young fellow, okay, a really annoying know-all according to my brother Giles, I managed to get hold of some safety statistics regarding cross channel shipping and some engineering data on the tunnel.
We made the crossing to France during very high winds resulting in a great many holidaymakers heaving up their fried egg and chips in the crowded toilets.
My brother and I thought it was a great adventure and spent much of the time on deck hanging on to the railings looking at the grey, angry churning sea.
As the ferry rocked and lurched its way toward the Northern coast of France I went inside and kept mum amused with statistics of ferry disasters and the very high safety record for rail travel. Eventually dad told me to shut up and I went back outside to join my brother.
As a ten-year-old I remember thinking that ferry was enormous, when I saw the Yin Qui as a thirty-two-year-old, I realised I could have had no notion as to what enormous really was. The Yin Qui was a seven million ton passenger and freight ship.
Yes, I’ve got those figures right, seven million tons.
The trip from the Institute to the docks took a full fifteen minutes by car. I say car, I mean the round white thing you sit in that goes underground very fast that everyone in London referred to as a car.
I was travelling w
ith Nkoyo, although very little of why I was going anywhere was explained to me verbally before I departed the Institute. Nkoyo had given me a small package and an even smaller explanation.
It was basically another case of ‘would you care to come with me Gavin’. However, thanks to my kidonge I had allowed myself to understand that we were travelling to South London to board a surface ship to attend something called the General Assembly that was located in a massive building in Lagos.
I just knew that, don’t ask me how I knew, it felt as if someone had told me the day before and I was remembering what they told me. That’s the best explanation I can give.
I was also suddenly aware that the General Assembly was not always located in Lagos, it had only been there for four years. Before that it was in Tokyo, before that in Beijing. I knew that in about a year’s time it would be in Paris but the same representatives would be in power for another twelve years. I knew that each political administration was in power for twenty years, that’s how often they had elections. Once every twenty years.
‘Why have elections only every twenty years?’ I asked Nkoyo as we surged along the hidden motorway.
‘It was decided a long time ago, politicians with short terms in office always made short-term decisions. Politicians who know they are going to be in power for a long time tend to make longer-term decisions more carefully, knowing they are very likely to still be in a position of responsibility when whatever decision they make comes to fruition.’
I sat staring at Nkoyo in silence; there really wasn’t anything to say to that. I couldn’t argue with it, it sounded rather sensible but I worried about the source of the information I had just become aware of, was it really that straightforward or were there dissenting voices that would come up with equally sensible arguments as to why it was a terrible idea to allow politicians to be in power so long. I couldn’t seem to find a way to know that.
‘How do I know what you’re telling me is generally accepted by most people, I mean I understand the theory, it sounds eminently sensible but…’
News from the Squares Page 19