The eight took their seats.
“If you look at your armrest on the right, you’ll see a control panel. Please touch the ‘Notepad’ button,” instructed Miss Sullivan.
As they pressed the button, small notepads emerged from the armrest and swung in front of each of the students. It had the same screen Tom had seen on their first day.
“Now if you can all just write your name in the box and then touch the enter button with your right forefinger,” she instructed and watched as they all completed the task. “Excellent, that’s it, from now on all you need to do is touch any screen in the school and you will be logged straight into your account.”
A number of different cools, wickeds and excellents could be heard around the class.
Miss Sullivan continued.
“Every single desk has a similar notepad, one touch and you access everything you have ever stored. The school is paperless, if you prefer to use a pen to take notes than using a keyboard just use the electronic pens and write on the screen and it will be automatically be added to your notes for whatever lesson you’re in. The system is intuitive and will correct you if you make mistakes.”
“So education has finally broken into the twenty first century,” whispered Tom to Lela.
“If you touch the timetable tab at the top of your screen, your timetable will come up.”
The students eagerly clicked the symbol, desperate to see their timetables. Weeks of speculation as to what was in store for them was about to end.
Tom eagerly clicked the button and his timetable appeared in front of him.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
8.00 — 9.00
English
Maths
Geography
Chemistry
Maths
9.00–10.00
Maths
Physics
French
English
Biology
10.15 — 11-15
French
Latin
Art/Music
Physics
Spanish
Sports
10.00 — 2.00
11.15–12.15
Chemistry
Spanish
Religious Studies
Biology
Computing
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
Lunch
1.30 — 2.30
Economics
World History
New Business
Marketing
Law
2.30 — 3.30
World Politics
Accounting
Psychology
Economics
Accounting
3.30 — 4.30
International
Business
Business Admin
Leadership Skills
World Politics
Etiquette
Miss Sullivan allowed them all some time to digest the information before continuing.
“If you could please touch the English lesson at 8.00 a.m. on Monday, you’ll see that the screen jumps to a more detailed page, giving you the location, your teacher’s name, any homework due for that day and as you can see, you have an essay due for next Monday. You will also see the coursework tab. If you press that,” Miss Sullivan waited as they each navigated to the correct area. “You’ll see a comprehensive list and detailed notes for each of your lessons, you’ll also notice suggested links for further help and information. Every subject has the same facility, everything is there for you.”
“This is fantastic,” Tom said to Lela as he flew through the pages.
“I must, however, emphasise that although you have all your coursework to hand, do not underestimate how much work will be required and how hard the courses are going to be. The school planners are using you as guinea pigs and have opted for the hardest option this year.”
A bell sounded signifying that it was 8.55 a.m. and time for their next class. Nobody moved.
“Well, everybody, time to go to your first class,” said Monsieur Becherand from the stage.
Everybody in Tom’s class looked at each other, they had no idea where to go.
“It’s OK, I’m your Physics teacher and your first lesson is with me. I’ll take you to the lab,” announced Miss Sullivan to Class IH.
The class breathed a sigh of relief and followed Miss Sullivan to the Science Wing. The rest of the day was really an induction day, to get to know their teachers and the other students in their class.
There were four students of oriental origin. Lela, Chingmei, Mia and Chen. There were two South Americans, Diego the son of the Paraguayan President and Elena the daughter of a Brazilian industrialist. There was one student from the West Indies, Amy, the daughter of the President of Dominica, a tiny Caribbean island. There were five European students, Tom, Tristan, Oleg, Alysia, the daughter of a Greek shipping tycoon and Princess Madeleine of Sweden. There were two students from the Middle East, Jamal the son of the Syrian President and Ahmad. Three North Americans, Thierry, the son of a Canadian businessman, Heather, the daughter of an American financial family and Zach. There were two Africans, Thabo and Hassan, the Crown Prince of Morocco, one Australasian, Holly, the daughter of a very successful designer in Australia and one Indian student, Devesh or ‘Dev’, the son of the richest family in India.
At the end of a rather long and tiring day, Tom and Lela collapsed on Lela’s bed. Neither said anything for a while, they had just finished another five course dinner and were both mentally and physically exhausted.
Tom spoke first. They had not had a minute alone all day.
“So what do you think?”
“Amazing…you?”
“Amazing.”
“What about the people in our class?” asked Lela.
“Very cool, they all seem really nice…you?”
“Yeah, everybody is great and really friendly.”
They continued to discuss the other students, their teachers and their timetable. An hour later, at 9.00 p.m., Tom realised the time.
“Isn’t your father due to dial in for your lesson?”
“No he gave me the night off as it was my first day at school. But we should give them a quick call and let them know what happened.”
“Good idea. It’s 6.00 p.m. back home but if we wait an hour we’re more likely to catch my dad.”
“OK. Let’s stick the TV on while we wait.”
Tom was amazed at how cool the TV system was. It could tap into any service around the world. The menu allowed them to select a continent and sub menus allowed them to drill down to individual TV stations across the world. Tom selected the latest episode of The Apprentice. He loved the American version and unfortunately, his father had declined to be ‘the Boss’ in the UK version, along with a number of the best British businessman. The BBC had ended up running the show with a third-rate entrepreneur and a bunch of no-hope contenders. It was dreadful and cringeful compared to the very slick American version.
An hour later, they phoned home and spoke to Rachel and Saki and just as they were about to hang up, Donald arrived home. They repeated everything they had already said and eventually hung up. Everyone was extremely happy with developments. Tom had some work to do on proposals and thought it best to knock them on the head before he started having homework to contend with. He said goodnight to Lela and headed back to his room.
Their first day at school had gone as smoothly as they could possibly have hoped for.
Chapter 33
Reaper heard the ping which announced that a new message had arrived. He moved across to the PC and looked at his inbox. It was from Ling, she had been filing a report every night for the last week and each one read exactly the same, nothing to report. He was beginning to think the Ling card was not a master stroke aftera
ll. Another message arrived and he opened it straight away. It was just an update from Leo, he had visited a couple of the camps, everything was going well.
Reaper returned to the note from Ling and clicked on it and immediately revised his thoughts. Ling may have been the best master stoke he had ever pulled. She may just save him and the world a lot of hassle. He called Pieter, one of his lieutenants, and told him to get Mozambique.
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday had passed like a blur, the pace of their classes was intense, no sooner had they discussed a topic before they moved on to the next. The only way to learn the subject was in their own time. How Lela was able to do her training with Saki as well as all the classwork, amazed Tom. He was knackered, it seemed he was permanently tired and was not the only one. Every one of their friends was the same, classwork, homework, dinner, homework, bed. They all hoped it was just the first week and they would get into a rhythm.
Etiquette was their last class on Friday and class 1H was looking forward to what they expected to be a bit of a laugh and light relief at the end of what had been a very hard week. Tristan had been the only one to have looked up the detail of the lesson and told them all at lunch that it was a Miss something or other, he couldn’t remember exactly her name but it was Scandinavian and he was very excited.
Their Accounts teacher had been called away at 3.15 and had decided to let them go early rather than wait for him to come back. They had therefore arrived early for their last class and Tristan was still going on about the young Scandinavian teacher.
“She’s going to be really hot, afterall most Scandinavian women are you know,” he said as they took their seats in the very strange classroom. It had a huge dining table at the front instead of a blackboard.
“Exactly how many Scandinavians do you base that assumption on?” asked Tom.
Tristan thought for a second.
“100 % of the Scandinavian women I know are hot!” he said triumphantly.
Zach had seen him look across the room.
“That would be one, Madeleine,” he said.
Nobody argued however, every one of the boys in the class fancied Princess Madeleine from Sweden, bar one, Ahmad, who only had eyes for Lela.
The girls had begun to look around interested at the conversation and how it would develop. The boys went quiet, blushed and hoped the teacher would arrive soon.
The door opened and a tray full of bananas entered the room. All that could be seen were the teacher’s legs, her body and face were obscured by a huge quantity of bananas.
“Nice legs,” whispered Tristan.
The bananas were laid down on the large table and the face revealed. Lela, Tom and Chen froze.
“Oh God,” whispered Tristan sitting back into his seat. “That face would give you nightmares and look at the moustache!”
Tom kicked him.
“Anderson wouldn’t be the Scandinavian name would it?”
“Yeah, why, do you see her?” he asked not realising she had arrived.
“Yes,” Tom winced, bat ears would have heard every word. Etiquette had just become the worst class of the week and they would start every week for the rest of the year spending the whole week dreading it.
“You boy, Tristan isn’t it?” Ms Anderson barked, pointing at Tristan.
“Yes Miss,” answered Tristan cheerily.
“It’s not Miss, it’s Ms. Come here!” she commanded.
Tom couldn’t look, Tristan walked down to the front of the class blissfully unaware of the superhuman hearing capabilities of Mr Sakamoto’s private secretary and part time Etiquette teacher. It was like watching a lamb to the slaughter.
“Did you wish to share your conversation with the rest of the class?” she asked acidly as Tristan reached the front.
Tristan suddenly realised he was in trouble and stood silent.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Ms Anderson and I will be teaching you proper Etiquette. Mr Kennedy, would you be so kind as to join us up here?”
Tom stood up and walked slowly to the front and joined Tristan.
“Gentlemen, although I use that term loosely, would you like to repeat your conversation to the class?”
Both shook their heads vigorously.
“So what have we learned today, gentlemen?”
“It’s impolite to whisper,” offered Tom.
“Excellent, did anyone else in the room not know that?” she asked the class.
No hands went up.
“It seems everybody else knew that. Gentlemen, perhaps you both require some remedial help to catch up with the rest of your colleagues,” she said smiling at them both.
Both shook their heads.
“Now, now, there’s no need to be bashful gentlemen, nobody thinks less of you. However it would be unfair to burden the rest of the class with your inadequacies to date. Lunch every Sunday will begin your remedial work and we’ll see how quickly you can catch up,” she smiled and placed her thumb and forefinger together and opened and closed them, just like how you would use a pair of tweezers thought Tom.
“But…” both Tristan and Tom began to respond but were met by a hand and stare that suggested it may get worse with any further talk.
They walked back to their seats with Sunday lunch to look forward to.
“Now ladies and gentlemen, we will begin our lessons with how to eat a banana…”
Half the class began to laugh but the look from Ms Anderson cut the laughter instantly.
“Could you all please join me at the table?”
The next hour was spent learning how to eat a banana with a knife and fork, receiving a copy of Debrett’s and the biggest homework task to date. They had to memorise the correct form of address for hundreds of titles. Etiquette was now officially the worst class on the timetable and Tom and Tristan were going to have it twice a week.
“So what are we going to do tonight?” asked Lela as they walked back to their block.
Tom and Tristan were still on a downer, Sunday with hairy lip, neither could think of anything worse. They had tried but so far, nothing came close, even Ahmad’s suggestion of cleaning the army base toilets with a toothbrush had received a positive nod from both.
“Whatever,” responded Tom shrugging his shoulders.
“How about ten pin bowling?” suggested Mingmei.
“Excellent idea,” replied the girls.
Tom, Tristan and Ahmad groaned.
“What’s wrong with bowling?” asked Chen.
“You’ll see,” replied Tom. “Wait a minute, there’s Zach, he’s American. I’ll bet he’s a good bowler.” Tom ran across and invited Zach for a game, he was hoping he’d even things up a little. They might even beat the girls for a change.
Four hours later, a humiliated boys team made their way to bed, Tom and Tristan had rounded off a terrible day with a crushing defeat. Zach and Chen were both hopeless. Zach it transpired had never bowled before in his life and neither had Chen. At least Oleg had bowled before and managed to maintain an almost acceptable score line.
However Lela had pulled an ace in the hole, she had made up her team numbers with Elena and Madeleine from their class and one of Madeleine’s friends, Erika. It appeared Tristan’s theory was correct, all Scandinavian women were gorgeous whether they were blonde or brunette. Tristan had been useless, Tom not much better, only Ahmad had bowled anything like normal, unaffected by the Scandinavian beauties.
It was the most crushing defeat Tom had ever suffered at Lela’s hands.
“See you in the morning loser,” shouted Lela as she went to her room. She was loving it, Tom always had been a bad loser and she loved winding him up about it.
Tom didn’t respond, he just slammed his door loudly. It had been a very bad day.
Reaper answered the phone the second it rang.
“You’re late,” he barked.
Ling was not impressed.
“We were bowling,” she answered glibly. She was tired, she had just spent a week doin
g homework and was not in the mood.
Reaper stifled a laugh, he hadn’t thought about the classwork Ling would have to do. She had to protect her cover.
“Did you win?” he smirked.
“That’s not important,” she snapped. “Are we a go for my mission?” she asked impatiently.
“Yes, my men will be in place and if you pull this off, you’re looking at a bonus $1 million!”
“Thank you, I’ll keep you updated,” she said coolly, trying to hide her excitement.
They ended the call, although using very secure and encrypted transmissions, Reaper did not want to risk it. The island may have a few surprises his client wasn’t aware of but he doubted it.
One of the twins watched the student sneak outside their targets’ block and make a quick call. He couldn’t make out who it was but thought it was strange. He’d speak to his brother, maybe he’d know what was going on.
Chapter 34
Tristan and Tom still hadn’t cheered up. The thought of Sunday lunch with Ms Anderson just stuck in their minds. It didn’t help that the girls were still revelling about the previous evening’s overwhelming victory, over breakfast.
It was 9.50 a.m. when they left the restaurant and walked across to the sports stadium. Tom had clicked on the Sports button on the timetable to see what was in store for them, hoping it would be something nice and easy to break them in gently.. However all that popped up on the screen, was ‘Sports, Sport Stadium 10.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.’, no further detail.
As they walked into the stadium, it appeared they were not the only class who had been given the same instructions. The stadium was full, Miss Sullivan was there and ushered them to the seating block labelled H.
“What’s going on?” whispered Lela to their Class Principal.
“Just take a seat, we’re about to start,” she replied avoiding the question.
At exactly 10.00 a.m., Mr Sakamoto walked into the middle of the stadium and looked around him at the stands full of students.
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