The Infinite. Patience Agbabi

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Mrs C Eckler gave us a quiz about 2048 to see if we’d been listening in class. It had questions about eco-robots who collect rubbish. I liked it because it was multiple choice, which means they give you some silly answers, some not-so-silly, and the correct one, and you have to choose. I like reading the silly answers best because they’re like jokes. The best ones were:

      Question 2: Why must we keep the Time Squad trip a secret?

      Answer B said: To stop the wristwatch becoming extinct.

      The correct answer was C: Because we all swore the Oath of Secrecy to protect The Gift and everything connected with it.

      Question 6: Why is the population smaller than in 2020?

      Answer E said: Everyone went to live on the moon!

      The correct answer was A: The global one-child-per-family policy.

      There was one I had to guess.

      Question 7: What was significant about the year 2000?

      I put A: The Time Squad was formed.

      But I thought it might have been C: There was an upsurge of eco-crimes.

      I couldn’t remember if the upsurge BEGAN in 2000 or just after.

      After that, she showed a video about the Time Squad Centre.

      First ‘2020’ came onto the screen followed by a picture of the globe with green for land and blue for water. Then ‘2048’, and there was more blue on the globe. The camera zoomed into the green really quickly, so it was like the view from a plane. Rain seemed to be dripping down the camera lens.

      The camera zoomed in again on an aerial view of a glass building surrounded by lots of fields and trees green as a tropical rainforest, a play park with everything made of wood and a group of yellow dome-shaped buildings that looked like upside-down baskets. It was still raining.

      Big letters on the screen said ‘FIGHT CRIME ACROSS TIME’. That’s the Time Squad motto. A voice said, ‘Welcome to Time Squad Centre, 2048,’ and the camera zoomed in on an old white woman. Her face was like earth when it hasn’t rained for months, her hair was a white electric shock and she had cat’s eyes. She looked 200 years old. A caption said ‘MILLENNIA, Centre Director’ and she said, ‘I run the Centre.’ I smiled when she used the word ‘run’, imagining her sprinting down the track in the 100 metres, doing a dip finish.

      Then the camera zoomed in on the grass and trees and showed a bald man chopping wood who looked about 40. Lots of letters were flying around like insects, which made me feel dizzy until they settled into words, a caption, which said ‘LE TEMPS, Eco-landscaper’ and Le Temps was a talking head. He said, ‘I plan the land,’ and I was surprised because I expected him to have a French accent but he just sounded posh. I know le temps means weather in French so maybe he was in charge of the weather as well. He wasn’t doing a very good job!

      Then the camera went into the building and zoomed in on a café sign, with green tendrilly writing on a white background that read ‘The Beanstalk’, then into a large white room with a brown floor with a giant beanstalk in the middle that went right up into the ceiling, and it focused on a fat woman who was older than Le Temps but younger than Millennia and looked Indian. She was kneading a big lump of white dough like it was a punchbag. Her long black hair had silver streaks and it was wound up into a knot on top of her head and she had her nose pierced with a sparkly blue stone. The caption said ‘SEASON, Cook’ and she became a talking head. She said, ‘I make the food.’

      Then the camera went along a corridor and up a spiral staircase to a door that said ‘The Igloo’ and went inside. The room was round, with large white bricks and a dome ceiling. Then a teenage boy appeared out of nowhere, disappeared, appeared again in another part of the room, and I recognised him because he came to our school last year at the beginning of Seventh Year. He looked exactly the same: a skinny black boy with hair like antennae and white clothes with graffiti on them. A caption came up saying ‘MC², Energiser’. I assumed he charged us up like batteries. The camera zoomed in on his face and he blinked several times before he said, ‘I move through time and space,’ and Big Ben pumped his arm in the air. That was the end of the video.

      Mrs C Eckler turned off the equipment and smiled.

      ‘Any questions? Yes, Ben.’

      ‘In 2048, are we 40 years old?’

      ‘No, Ben. When we leap, we’ll all stay the same age as now. But you’ve raised a very important issue.’ She cleared her throat, so I knew she was going to say something important. ‘Very rarely, when people leap they meet their future self. Your FUTURE self would be 40.’

      I raised my hand. ‘Is it dangerous?’

      ‘No, Elle. But you mustn’t approach your future self. Let them approach you. They will know exactly what to do.’

      I still wasn’t sure Big Ben’s future self would be less likely to go from 0 to 10 than him. I had lots more questions, like how MC² was going to charge us up like batteries, but they stayed in my head, which was resting on the desk straight after the video. I’d already started replaying it back in my mind, especially Season kneading a big lump of white dough. I knew we had breadmaking in the timetable and wondered if we were going to make WHITE bread. I hoped so because I only eat white food. If the food has a colour, or worse still lots of different colours on the same plate, the smell and flavour mixed with the SIGHT of it is too much and I get sensory overload and have to have time-out. I don’t want to eat with my eyes closed.

      I was still thinking that when I realised Mrs C Eckler was talking to me.

      ‘Elle, be ready for me to collect you at 5:45 a.m. this Saturday. Text me if you’re feeling delicate.’

      I looked up at her. ‘Why will I feel delicate?’

      ‘Sometimes we have an Oops, remember. Things happen that we don’t expect. If you’re feeling a BIT delicate, you can still come on the trip. But we must plan for Oops.’

      Oops is the bane of my life. Oops makes my heart beat fast and hard like I just ran the 100 metres but instead of feeling happy I feel scared. If there was a person called Oops, they’d be my mortal enemy. Worse than Pete LMS. Mortal enemy means you fight to the death.

      After lunch was double geography. We’ve been doing projects on climate change and what we can do to stop it. We had to interview grown-ups about food, fossil fuels or plastic bags. I interviewed Grandma about food. I don’t want the climate to change because I find it difficult when it goes from spring to summer and autumn to winter. The government make the clocks go forwards or backwards, it’s either too dark or too light and messes with my sleep. It takes me weeks to recover. But the worst thing is when weather changes dramatically from one day to the next. I have to check the forecast a lot because the prediction can change every hour, especially when it’s windy. The wind makes the weather move around like a poltergeist.

      Projects mean working in pairs and I was with Big Ben. He wanted to do CO₂ emissions from cars. He plans to invent the first eco-friendly supercar. But I wanted to do the meat and dairy industry because I read online that the rainforest is being destroyed so they can grow cows to make into burgers. When the cows poo they mess up the gases in the air, so the air gets СКАЧАТЬ