The Infinite. Patience Agbabi

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       Chapter 03:00

       MC2

      At the beginning of Seventh Year, a criminal came to our school. He was a skinny black boy with clumps of hair sticking out of his head like antennae. His eyes turned up at the edges and he had an infinity tattoo on his left hand which looked like a number 8 sideways: . He wasn’t in school uniform because he was a criminal, so his trousers and top were white with graffiti all over them. I tried to read what it said but it gave me a headache. His name was MC², the boy we’d see months later in the Time Squad video. But we didn’t know that at the time.

      Mrs C Eckler had given us investigative homework on MC² the night before, so we could ask sensible questions. She gave us a ‘secret link’ and reminded us of our Oath of Secrecy. That’s when I found out he was a Leapling who’d committed lots of Anachronisms. Normal bad people commit crimes in their own time, but bad Leaplings steal things or kill people in the past so it’s harder to trace the crime. All these crimes are called Anachronisms. MC² was nicknamed the Mixer of Chronology but I didn’t have time to find out what it meant because Grandma wanted me to fetch the comb and pomade.

      Mrs C Eckler smelled of perfume that day rather than Pears soap. She had her ginger hair down to her shoulders rather than piled up on her head as usual and was wearing bright blue eyeshadow. I didn’t like this. I kept thinking she was someone else who’d stolen Mrs C Eckler’s voice.

      ‘Now Seventh Year, we are EXTREMELY lucky today.’ She was pacing up and down rather than standing still, which was really distracting. ‘We have a very special visitor . . .’ I think I zoned out during her introduction, but the next thing I knew everyone was cheering like he was a pop star.

      MC² blinked all the time. He blinked so fast you might not even notice. I think he was scared. I tried to hate him because he’d broken the law but I felt bad for him because he was scared. And he spoke in rhyme so it was more like a rap than a talk.

      ‘To the power of 2, I deliver my apology,

      I committed intricate crimes against chronology . . .’

      That word again. Chronology. I know now it means the order that things happen. MC² was nicknamed the Mixer of Chronology because he sold things that were out of time, like DJs who used to ‘mash up records’ so the words came out backwards and sounded like another language. But I didn’t know that last year.

      ‘The making of watches and clocks is horology,

      I stole the past, so the present acknowledge me.’

      And I remembered reading online he became an expert on clocks and watches. He would go back in time to find a clock that was worth lots of money and then bring it back to the present to sell it. Then he did the opposite: he stole modern watches and sold them to rich people in the past. He didn’t make as much money that way round but liked to watch people do what-big-eyes in 1800. The wristwatch hadn’t been invented yet.

      ‘If you’re in a mess, if you’re in distress,

      send an SOS via SMS . . .’

      Lots more applause.

      And Mrs C Eckler was smiling from East to West.

      ‘Thank you for that wonderful presentation, MC². Seventh Year have looked you up online so I’m sure they have lots of questions to ask you. But before they do, could you tell us the story of your name?’

      ‘Yeah.’ He disappeared, reappeared on the spot, his whole body blinking! Big Ben whooped, the whole class started muttering in amazement and my eyes went too big for my head. It was like leaping for a split second. How did he do it? ‘When I was a kid,’ he said, ‘I leapt before I could walk. For real. Too much energy with no place to go. Doc said ADHD and prescribed medication. But the meds didn’t work so I got sent specialist school to help me.’

      ‘One of my peer mentors said,

      “You’re a bomb ready to blast, spar.

      Channel that energy, you’ll go far.”

      ‘I put my energy into rhyme. When I started rapping, I leapt all over the stage. Here, there, everywhere. There was this brother called himself Einstein after the genius professor that hatched nuclear energy. Einstein said, “You ain’t just MC, you’re MC².” He didn’t just mean a rapping MC. He named me after the formula: E=MC². E’s Energy, M’s mass, C’s the speed of light. The most hyper MC on the planet.’

      I’ve heard of the original Einstein. He had the best rhyming name ever. He wasn’t a Leapling with The Gift but he must have had one in his family to get that surname. MC² is a brilliant name because it means lots of different things at the same time.

      Mrs C Eckler thanked MC².

      ‘Now Seventh Year, I know you have lots of questions.’

      I put my hand up immediately and she peered round the room. ‘Yes, Elle.’

      I stood up. ‘Doesn’t MC also mean Mixer of Chronology? That’s what it said online. And Master of Ceremonies?’

      ‘Yeah. Maestro. Elle, isn’t it? And Microphone Commando in hip hop and any other meaning you wannit to mean,’ he said. ‘I don’t wanna confuse no one. But words are my specialisation. I like what they can do.’

      ‘If you’re a criminal, you are a liar because you don’t want to get caught. So you could be lying to us now.’

      I sat down, embarrassed. That didn’t come out the way I wanted. I was happy and scared at the same time. I loved the way he made words sound like music but I didn’t trust him. He was a criminal. He must have told lies to escape the police.

      ‘I ain’t a crim no more, Elle. An’ I never told lies. When they caught me, I told the truth. I had to go back in time and replace everythin’ I’d stolen so I didn’t mess up history and vice versa.’

      By messing up history, he meant you had to be careful when you went back in the past in case you swatted a fly and Hitler ended up winning World War Two. We did that in Sixth Year. I stood up again.

      ‘Is it a poem about vices like greed and gluttony?’ My voice was speaking before I could stop it.

      ‘No.’ СКАЧАТЬ